116 . POLITICAL LIFE-IV 



to confine to a few days, thus came to absorb my leisure 

 for months, and I remember that, at last, when I had 

 given my lecture on the subject to my class at the univer 

 sity, a feeling of deep regret, almost of remorse, came 

 over me, as I thought how much valuable time I had given 

 to a subject that, after all, had no bearing on any pres 

 ent problem, which would certainly be forgotten by the 

 majority of my hearers, and probably by myself. 



These studies were made mainly in 1859. Then the 

 lectures were laid aside, and though, from time to time, 

 when visiting France, I kept on collecting illustrative ma 

 terials, no further use was made of them until this debate 

 during the session of the State Senate of 1864. 



Out of this offhand speech upon the assignats grew a 

 paper which, some time afterward, I presented in Wash 

 ington before a number of members of the Senate and 

 House, at the request of General Garfield, who was then 

 a representative, and of his colleague, Mr. Chittenden of 

 Brooklyn. In my audience were some of the foremost 

 men of both houses, and among them such as Senators 

 Bayard, Stevenson, Merrill, Conkling, Edmunds, Gib 

 son, and others. This speech, which was the result of 

 my earlier studies, improved by material acquired later, 

 and most carefully restudied and verified, I repeated be 

 fore a large meeting of the Union League Club at New 

 York, Senator Hamilton Fish presiding. The paper thus 

 continued to grow and, having been published in New 

 York by Messrs. Appleton, a cheap edition of it was cir 

 culated some years afterward, largely under the auspices 

 of General Garfield, to act as an antidote to the &quot;Green 

 back Craze &quot; then raging through Ohio and the Western 

 States. 



Finally, having been again restudied, in the light of my 

 ever-increasing material, it was again reprinted and cir 

 culated as a campaign document during the struggle 

 against Mr. Bryan and the devotees of the silver stan 

 dard in the campaign of 1896, copies of it being spread 

 very widely, especially through the West, and placed, 



