CURRENCY AND FARMING. 15 



promise ; it is the promise of a government that is dishonored 

 every time it issues them. The government does not pay 

 what it promises, cannot pay what it promises, makes no at- 

 tempt to pa} r what it promises ; therefore, I say it is dishon- 

 est. But No, says Mr. Boutwell ; Mr. George S. Boutwell, 

 a senator of Massachusetts, and a late secretary of the treas- 

 ury. No, he says, this is not a dishonest promise. Look at 

 it ; the government does not promise to pay at any definite 

 time ; therefore the government is not dishonest, says Mr. 

 Boutwell, — says it from his seat in the senate, — because there 

 is no specified time of payment. No specified time of pay- 

 ment ! What sort of an operation is that ? Suppose a man 

 should come to borrow money of you, but without setting any 

 time of payment, and supposing he could wheedle you into 

 lending money on such terms, and when you come to him for 

 its return, he refuses, because he had set no time for its pay- 

 ment, — what sort of a rascal would you call him who thus 

 took advantage of your folly? Now, gentlemen, these are 

 dishonored promises to pay, and thus produce mischief, and 

 are not worth anything outside of the country that forces their 

 acceptance. 



Coming back to the main question, — being money as a 

 medium of exchange, — I say they do not exchange for what 

 gold and silver would, and they are forced upon us to our 

 incalculable injury. I think any one who looks at the matter 

 honestly is obliged to say that this whole legal-tender business 

 is one of the greatest mistakes, if not the greatest mistake, of 

 our war. Just look at it ; see what it has done. This same 

 legal-tender act has increased our national debt more than 

 one thousand millions of dollars ; it has swollen prodigiously 

 all over our state, town and county indebtedness ; has aug- 

 mented our taxes, increased the expenses of living, encouraged 

 unthrift and extravagance in the government. Worse than 

 all that, it has poisoned the minds of the people by familiar- 

 izing them with these promises, and obliging them to use 

 them as though they were good and true. And I say this 

 only needed the addition of a decree of. the supreme court of 

 the United States, making it the law of the laud, to make it 

 the heaviest curse, the greatest of all mistakes, made in that 

 terrible peiiod of our national life. 



