140 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



French assignats, and knew that they had 

 failed because they had been predicated on the 

 revenues of property to which the government 

 issuing them had no legal tenure, and that 

 when the Church reclaimed her property and 

 the returning nobility claimed its, there was 

 no means of redeeming the paper. He knew, 

 too, the story of our continental paper ; that 

 it had been issued with no means provided for 

 its redemption or absorption. He knew, sir 

 (for in 1862 he and I talked over the wise 

 opinions pressed upon the Continental Con- 

 gress by Benjamin Franklin), that that great 

 man had urged that Congress not to increase 

 the issues of paper, but to borrow from the peo- 

 ple those which had already been made by 

 offering them an interest-bearing bond; and, 

 as I have recently had occasion to write, had 

 Franklin's advice been taken, the story of con- 

 tinental money would not have become, as it 

 now is, a snare and a delusion to many hon- 

 est, well-meaning and patriotic people; be- 

 cause the amount issued would have been 

 small, the excess would have flowed back 

 upon the Treasury, the people would have 

 held interest-bearing bonds which in time 

 would have been paid off, the whole amount 

 of the debt would have been nominal in com- 

 parison with the figures presented by the total 

 issue of continental money. 



"Sir, I say that when we issued Treasury 

 notes, now known as greenbacks, these instruc- 

 tive lessons were present to the minds of those 

 who created that beneficent currency ; and they 

 provided that the notes should be convertible 

 into interest-bearing bonds of the Government, 

 that whoever took them dnd found them in 

 excess of his wants could invest them with the 

 Government and receive compensation there-, 

 for. But, sir, evil counsels prevailed. The 

 House determined that those notes should be 

 full legal tender for all debts, public and pri- 

 vate ; but the Senate yielded to the evil coun- 

 sels which to-day seem to control both this 

 and that branch of our national Legislature. 

 It amended the House bill by providing that 

 the interest on the bonds should be paid in 

 gold, and in that instant it in so far repudiated 

 the instrument of exchange, the currency it 

 was authorizing the Government to issue, for 

 it also provided that in order to secure a suffi- 

 cient supply of gold for the payment of that 

 interest the customs duties should be collected 

 in gold. 



" Sir, when it became inevitable to him that 

 the country must be lost or the bankers grati- 

 fied, my venerable colleague in sadness of 

 spirit consented to yield, and the Pandora's 

 box from which all our financial evils have 

 sprung was then created with open lid. A 

 demand for gold was thus created beyond 

 the means of the country to meet. Foreign 

 bankers saw the position in which we had 

 placed ourselves. Speculators at home united 

 with them, and together they aggravated the 

 wide disparity between gold and the legal- 



tender notes of the Government, which these 

 unfortunate provisions had created. France 

 in her great trouble, taught by her own expe- 

 rience, and having our calamities which re- 

 sulted from this partial repudiation of our 

 legal-tender notes before her, recently made 

 through the Bank of France an issue of irre- 

 deemable legal-tender notes to the amount of 

 hundreds of millions ; and yet the difference 

 between gold and paper there has never ex- 

 ceeded 1 per cent. 



" And why ? Why, sir, simply because 

 France, wiser or more honest than we, made 

 her irredeemable bank-note a legal tender for 

 all debts, public and private. No * gold ring ' 

 could be formed there, no speculation was 

 open to foreign bankers ; but the artist, manu- 

 facturer, jeweler, or other person who wanted 

 gold for mechanical or scientific uses, could buy 

 it with the irredeemable notes of the Bank of 

 France at a depreciation of from one-fourth 

 of one per cent, to one per cent. 



"It is impossible to estimate the loss we 

 have sustained by this partial repudiation. 

 For some years it was but -partial, and we still 

 recognized our greenbacks as money upon 

 which the Government would pay interest. 

 We maintained a system of temporary loans. 

 They bore many names; compound-interest 

 notes, seven-thirties, certificates of indebted- 

 ness, etc., but they were all temporary loans, 

 in which the Government took the use of the 

 people's money, agreeing to return it forth- 

 with or upon short notice, and to pay interest 

 for the time it held it. 



" But, sir, the capitalists of Europe and this 

 country succeeded in persuading Congress and 

 the executive department of the Government 

 that it would not be a fraud to cheat laborers, 

 whether on the farm or in the factory or the 

 mine, by depreciating the currency with which 

 it paid them ; that it would not be dishonest 

 to further depreciate the medium for which 

 the farmer sells his grain and the laborer his 

 toil; and induced Congress to repeal all provi- 

 sions under which our legal tenders could be 

 invested in the funded debt of the Government, 

 and which gave strength, character, and value 

 to them. And the act of 1870 was vigorously 

 and eloquently marshaled by the then chair- 

 man of the Banking Committee, the gentleman 

 now a member from Ohio (Mr. Garfield), 

 field), which required the payment and can- 

 cellation of the poor $54,000,000 of three per 

 cents in which the greenback might still be 

 temporarily invested. 



" How stands your greenback now? Repu- 

 diated by the Government. It, will not receive 

 it for customs. It will not accept it at par for 

 interest-bearing loans. Yet it makes labor 

 take it in compensation for its toil and the 

 farmer for the produce of his acres. Is that 

 honest? Are bankers more numerous than 

 laborers or farmers? Can they not of their 

 abounding wealth provide themselves with the 

 comforts of life, while honest laborers are 



