State Convention - —Finance. 
135 
you have engaged in to-night. But whether this generation shall 
deserve and enjoy it or not, I predict a brilliant future for Ameri¬ 
can finance—a system that will be adopted throughout the world; 
a system providing a currency of ^exchangeable value, equivalent 
to gold, never excessive, never redundant, always convertible, and 
never requiring suspensions. Though individuals may be unsuc¬ 
cessful, general panics and financial crises will become unknown. 
I look upon the immediate repeal of the act of January 14, 1875, 
called the resumption act, as the first step in these reforms, and as 
a vital necessity to the well being of this business and industrial 
generation. 
It is commonly called the “ resumption act.” Resumption of 
what? Resumption of a system of suspensions and panics. Each 
of these suspensions and resumptions involved financial and com- 
r 
mercial crises in which not only fortunes were swamped, and fami¬ 
lies formerly in affluence, were rendered destitute, but also ener¬ 
getic, active, and useful business men, with fine executive ability, 
were forever reduced to the condition of employees to mammoth 
houses raised upon the ruins of smaller ones; mills stopped, and in¬ 
dustrious men by thousands and millions converted into tramps, 
begging or robbing while wandering through the country in search 
of work. It is a well established historical fact that General Har¬ 
rison's election in 1840 was secured by the energy, influence, and 
votes in the various States of those who had been made bankrupt 
by the crisis of 1837. It was a desire on the part of these men to 
have a bankrupt-law passed to relieve them from the incubus of 
debt which they could not hope to pay, rather than songs and party 
cries, that elected Harrison. The number of men who took the 
benefit of the bankrupt-act in the various States corresponded ver} r 
accurately with Harrison’s majority in those States. Panics refer¬ 
red to, occurred in the United States in 1811, 1814, 1819,1825,1834, 
1837, 1839,1841, 1857, and 1801. 
In England, omitting previous suspensions of u specie payment” 
by the Bank of England, the first of which occurred when that 
bank was not quite three years old, 1697, the bank suspended 
specie payments officially and practically in 1797, and remained 
officially suspended until 1823—twent} r -six years—though during 
the last three years it paid out coin for its notes when it had coin 
to spare and felt so disposed. The Bank of England resumed specie 
