11 



that this whole legal-tender business is one of the greatest mis- 

 takes, 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 

 }\ational debt more than one thousand millions of dollars ; it has 

 swollen prodigiously all over our State, town and county indebted- 

 ness ; has augmented 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 land, to make it the heaviest curse, the 

 greatest of all mistakes, made in that terrible period of our 

 national life. 



Are you aware of what our supreme court has done about the 

 matter ? In the spring of 1870 the question came before the court 

 as to the constitutionality of the legal-tender act in its application 

 to debts contracted before its passage. The supreme court decid- 

 ed, as any honest body must, that it was not applicable in such 

 cases. Contracts made when gold was the legal currency should 

 be paid in gold. Any honest eye can see that this is plain jus- 

 tice and law, and so it was decided by a majority of four to three. 

 But what was now the action of our wise law-makers at Washing- 

 ton thereupon ? There were prodigous interests at stake. All of 

 our great railroad corporations by this decision had got to pay 

 their bonds in gold. So Congress passes an act increasing the 

 number of the supreme court judges from seven to nine. General 

 Grant appoints to fill the two places thus made a judge who, in an 

 inferior court, had already pronounced an opposite decision to the 

 above, and a man who was the paid attorney of the Pennsylvania 

 Central railroad. Then followed a reversion of the decision of the 

 supreme court, by a majority of five to four, to the effect that the 

 act was constitutional, and this is the way we stand now. Some- 

 body says, " How could we have got along in the war without is- 

 suing paper money ? " There was an offer by a German banking- 

 house to furnish all the money wanted at 5 per cent, interest, pay- 

 able forty years hence. But Congress ignored this ; forty yeai's 

 was too long to wait for the privilege of payment. Moreover, it 



