160 MONEY AND CREDIT 



for having a good kind. It is the agreement of mankind which 

 makes it good, and when we disagree about the definition of the 

 dollar, we are plunged in doubts and fears, confidence and credit 

 are impaired, enterprise is chilled, business partakes of the nature 

 of gambling, widows and orphans are defrauded, labor is deprived of 

 its just reward, and civilization sinks to a lower stage. All these 

 conditions have been within the nation's recent experience. 



To sum up: We may say that once upon a time the nation lost 

 its financial pathway by accident and after wandering forty years in 

 the wilderness regained it by a process of self-education. During 

 all its wanderings, however, it never repudiated nor failed to keep 

 any contract that it had made. It has met both principal and 

 interest of its bonded debt in the times and manner agreed upon, 

 and has never imposed any tax thereon or allowed any inferior 

 authority to do so. For all this it reaps its reward in the highest 

 credit that any country ever enjoyed. There are some minor pro- 

 blems of finance yet to be solved, but since they may now be 

 approached without passion, we may fairly expect that they will be 

 solved rightly and in good time. Let us hope that we have learned 

 the cardinal principle of finance, viz., that the monetary standard 

 is established in the first instance by the tacit agreement of man- 

 kind, which it is the duty of the statute law to recognzie, ratify, and 

 enforce, not to resist, counteract, or annul. 



May we confidently predict that the lessons of the past will not 

 be forgotten and that the monetary equilibrium will never again 

 be disturbed? Alas, history teaches that such lessons gradually 

 fade from the public mind. Our colonial experience with bills of 

 credit did not prevent the revolutionary fathers from following the 

 same disastrous policy, nor did their example prevent us from 

 repeating the experiment. Moreover, President Grant's veto of 

 the Inflation Bill did not prevent Congress from passing another 

 one sixteen years later, which was not vetoed and which was at- 

 tended by disastrous consequences. But history teaches also that 

 such disturbances of the monetary equilibrium usually have their 

 beginning in a state of war. The colonies issued bills of credit 

 in the first instance for war purposes and afterwards for other pur- 

 poses. The revolutionary fathers did the same, and we also did the 

 same. The teaching of history, therefore, is that if we would 

 avoid the grossest financial errors of the past we should avoid as 

 much as possible the direful curse of war. Perhaps no teaching 

 could be more salutary to mankind. 





