CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



165 



entered into every contract which the Gov- 

 ernment has made in the sale of its bonds from 

 1862 to the present day. By the fifth section 

 of the act of 1862 it was provided : 



That all duties on imported goods shall be paid 

 in coin, or in notes payable on demand heretofore 

 authorized to be issued and by law receivable in pay- 

 ment of public dues, and the coin so paid shall be set 

 apart as a special fund, and shall be applied as follows : 



1. To the payment in coin of the interest on the 

 bonds and notes of the United States. 



2. To the purchase or payment of one per cent, of 

 the entire debt of the United States, to be made 

 within each fiscal year after the 1st day of July, 1862, 

 which is to be set apart as a sinking fund, and the 

 interest of which shall in like manner be applied to 

 the purchase or payment of the public debt as the 

 Secretary of the Treasury shall from time to time 

 direct. 



3. The residue thereof to be paid into the Treasury 

 of the United States. 



"A few years ago, when the duties upon 

 imports paid in gold coin very far exceeded 

 the amount of interest on the public debt, I 

 proposed by way of relief to the importer and 

 as a matter of credit to the United States notes, 

 that a percentage of those duties might be pay- 

 able in the demand notes of the Treasury ; and 

 I well remember that no one was louder in his 

 expression of reprobation of what he called 

 then a partial exercise of bad faith than the 

 present Secretary of the Treasury. I believed 

 that so long as enough coin was received at 

 the custom-houses to pay the interest on the 

 public debt, our pledge in incurring that debt 

 was fully satisfied. Now it seems from some 

 cause the Secretary's opinion has changed. 

 Mine has not. I cannot imagine for what pur- 

 pose it is proposed to receive the Treasury 

 notes instead of coin, when the Treasury notes 

 are as valuable as coin. The duties upon im- 

 ports of the United States have always, as a 

 matter of fact, been paid in coin. It forms 

 the only source from which under present laws 

 the United States receive their supply of coin 

 in which interest on their debt is guaranteed 

 to be paid. 



" Then, I ask, if already the Treasury note 

 is at par with coin, what further credit do you 

 desire for it? And if no further credit is de- 

 sired for it, it having reached the acme of a 

 par value, why do you take from the public 

 creditor and from the Treasury of the United 

 States the certain fund of coin that will enable 

 it to perform with certainty its contract under 

 the laws by which these bonds were authorized 

 and issued ? The tariff will continue in some 

 shape. We cannot, and never will, I suppose, 

 in the existence of the present generation, be 

 without a tariff of duties upon imports. If the 

 duties are paid in coin, it is a certainty to the 

 creditor which he can rely upon. Make the 

 duties payable in Treasury notes, and you then 

 throw upon him the risk, the possibility of 

 having a suspension of specie payment by the 

 United States, and of being paid not in coin 

 according to contract, but in the paper money 

 of the United States. The Government, no 



longer having a supply of coin from its cus- 

 toms duties, will be compelled to purchase it 

 and at what premium cannot now be foretold. 



" I cannot see any good reason for it. If 

 the notes were below par, and you sought to 

 advance them to par by giving them this new 

 function and use at the custom-house, there 

 would be at least that reason for it ; but the 

 notes are at par ; they are not only at par, but 

 they are worth more to-day in the markets of 

 the United States than a portion of the cur- 

 rency, the coin of silver which has been created 

 a standard of value and stamped with the name 

 of American dollars. My friend from Missouri 

 (Mr. Armstrong) says it is at par with gold, 

 and worth more than gold, he says. Without 

 questioning his statement, I only would say 

 that if he is right it goes to strengthen the sug- 

 gestion I have made, that if this be so, and the 

 paper, as my friend from Missouri says, is 

 stronger than gold, and as we all know it is 

 just now more valuable than silver by 10 per 

 cent., then why do you wish to give it an in- 

 creased credit by what plainly to my mind is a 

 breach of the contract under which every bond 

 of the United States has been sold since the 

 passage of the act of 1862? I cannot -there- 

 fore see the expediency, I cannot see the right, 

 I cannot see any good reason whatever for the 

 payment of customs duties in the Treasury 

 notes of the United States; but on the con- 

 trary, I see every reason of morality, of justice, 

 of expediency, in every light in which the sub- 

 ject can be viewed, that we should continue, 

 at least under existing laws, that source of sup- 

 ply of coin for the payment of interest upon 

 the public debt, and not only so, but for the 

 presence of coin in the country, which the con- 

 tinuance of duties payable in coin guarantees." 



Mr. Hill, of Georgia, said : "I wish now to 

 say that I concur in everything that has fallen 

 from the Senator from Delaware (Mr. Bayard) 

 on the subject of the power of Congress to 

 make a legal-tender paper money. 1 do not 

 believe that that power does exist under the 

 Constitution of this country. I have always 

 believed that it did not exist, even under the 

 war power. The Supreme Court has held it 

 to be constitutional as exercised in 1862, only 

 under the war power, and I am willing to rec- 

 ognize that decision of the Court as law as far 

 as it applies to the present legal-tender cur- 

 rency ; but I can never under any circum- 

 stances subscribe to the doctrine as an original 

 proposition that the Congress of the United 

 States does have power to make paper money 

 a legal tender for the payment of private debts. 

 On the other hand, I concur with what seems 

 to be the real purpose of this bill as it comes to 

 us from the House. I see no necessity myself 

 for what you call further contraction. I am 

 as good a hard-money man, to use a common 

 phrase, as any man in the Senate or in the 

 country. I want a sound currency, and I do 

 not believe any depreciated money is sound 

 currency; nor do I believe any currency is 



