CONGRESS, U. S. 



295 



friends. No, sir, the administration of patron- 

 age, the power to select depositories, all the 

 power conferred by this bill, the power of visi- 

 tation, all these are powers which tend rather 

 to decrease the influence of the Secretary of the 

 Treasury, because they are more likely to make 

 him enemies than friends." 



Mr. Howard, of Michigan, urged the follow- 

 ing grounds for his opposition to the bill : 

 " Sir, I am opposed to the scheme of the bill, 

 because it ignores the great principle which I 

 think is the only sound principle, that a paper 

 circulation shall be convertible at the will of 

 the holder into specie. I oppose it because it 

 is likely to wage a very unnecessary and, I fear, 

 dangerous war upon the State institutions ; and 

 I oppose it because I deplore the contest which 

 will probably arise out of it in our local poli- 

 tics." 



Mr. "Wilson, of Massachusetts, briefly said : 

 " Mr. President, I do not believe the banks are 

 warring on the Government. They have proved 

 in the past that they are not hostile to the 

 Government. I do not believe the Government 

 means to be hostile to them. I believe that 

 thia is a system which will absorb the existing 

 banking system, and will be for the credit of 

 the Government now, and for the interests of 

 the people afterward, including the banks." 



Mr. Doolittle, of Wisconsin, approved of the 

 bill. He said : " As an original question, un- 

 der the Constitution, I would maintain that the 

 States have no constitutional power to issue 

 paper money in any form, or to incorporate 

 any company to do so ; I would maintain, fur- 

 ther, that under the Constitution, gold and sil- 

 ver coin is the only constitutional currency; 

 but the truth is that the whole history of the 

 country, and I am constrained to say the deci- 

 sion of the Supreme Court, has gone the other 

 way. 



" I say the practical effect is, that the history 

 of the Government and the decision of the 

 court have given rise to about fifteen hundred 

 or two thousand banks created under the au- 

 thority of the States; and they have issued 

 their money, so that at the beginning of this 

 war practically all the money we had in this 

 country was the paper money of these two 

 thousand State banks ; and they very soon 

 suspended, and all the practical currency we 

 had was the irredeemable paper money of the 

 State banks. That is the real truth ; and in 

 that state of things and under the necessity 

 which grew out of it, I felt constrained, for 

 one, to vote for the issue of notes by the Gov- 

 ernment of the United States. 



"I maintain, sir, that in that state of the 

 currency, our only circulation, in fact, being 

 the irredeemable paper money of bank corpo- 

 rations created by the States, it was impossible 

 for this Government to go on with this war on 

 gold and silver. "We must go on with the war 

 on paper money as a practical fact ; and if we 

 must wage the war with paper money, we have 

 got to take the control of that paper money 



into our own hands, or the Government will 

 be destroyed ; and the practical question is the 

 mode of arriving at the control. This Govern- 

 ment must dominate and master and control 

 the currency of this country in this exigency. 



"I maintain, again, that it is not possible 

 for us to return to gold and silver at this pres- 

 ent time, and go on with this war, because the 

 State banks are continually issuing their paper 

 money. Such is the state of things that it is 

 an impossibility, and we must look the issue 

 squarely in the face. 



" As I have said, I believe it is a necessity 

 of this Government, in some mode, to take 

 control of the paper currency of the country. 

 In some way we have got to restrain the issues. 

 I will not say the paper that has already been 

 issued by the banks ; but the new issues of the 

 State banks, the issues which the banks have 

 made since the Government has commenced 

 issuing its legal-tender notes. "While we are 

 creating and issuing paper money, we cannot 

 allow the banks still to continue to flood the 

 channels of circulation. By that course we 

 are destroying ourselves. We must restrain 

 them, at least to the limit at which they stood 

 when we began, and not allow them to flood all 

 the channels of circulation. 



"Mr. President, the only possible way in 

 which we can do this is by inaugurating some 

 better system. It is claimed and maintained 

 that the system proposed to be inaugurated 

 here is a better system. Sir, I have listened 

 to the arguments on both sides, and I confess 

 that at times in my own mind I have been 

 shaken somewhat by the arguments I have 

 heard against this system : but no better sys- 

 tem seems to be proposed. Those who oppose 

 this system do not come forward with another ; 

 and as, in my judgment, it is necessary to have 

 some system, upon the whole I have been con- 

 strained to say that I shall favor this system, 

 because I do not see that a better system is 

 proposed to meet the exigency." 



After further brief debate, the vote was 

 taken on the bill as follows : 



YEAS Messrs. Anthony, Arnold, Chandler, Clark, 

 Doolittle, Fessenden, Foster, Harding, Harlan, Harris, 

 Howard, Howe, Lane of Kansas, Morrill, Nesmith, 

 Pomeroy, Sherman, Sumner, Ten Eyck, Wade, Wil- 

 kinson, Wilmot, and Wilson of Massachusetts 23. 



NAYS Messrs. Carlile, Collamcr, Cowan, Davis, 

 Dixon, Foot, Grimes, Henderson, Hicks, Kennedy, 

 King, Latham, McDougall, Powell, Rice, Richardson, 

 Saulsbury, Trumbull, Turpie, Wall, and Wilson of 

 Missouri 21. 



The bill came up in the House on the 19th 

 of February. Mr. Spaulding, of New York, 

 thus stated, some of fhe advantages of the 

 measure : " The additional advantages held out 

 by the bill to induce rich me%men of accumu- 

 lated capital, to join the Government in main- 

 taining this national currency, are : 



" 1. The national character given to the bills 

 to circulate at par in all parts of the United 

 States. 



" 2. It is made receivable at par for all in- 



