State Convention—Agricultural Rag-Baby. 197 
So, also, neither could he inflated, as each contains a like value as 
currency or money, and that value is inherent. As a necessary de¬ 
duction from this brief outline, under the beneficent workings of 
our “rag-baby, 11 the whole array of panics, suspensions, repudiations, 
inflations, monetary crises, etc., id genus omne , would be among the 
things that were. 
It would effect a large reduction of the principal of the public 
debt, by giving the government means to pay off a large portion of 
its matured bonds, and funding a large portion in a bond drawing 
about one-lialf the present rate of interest. 
Perhaps the greatest benefit to accrue to the industry and mate¬ 
rial interests of our country, which would arise from this system 
of finance, would be the final removal from the halls of Congress 
and party politics, the whole matter of sustaining the public credit, 
of raising a revenue to pay our interest on bonds and the matur¬ 
ing indebtedness, and indeed, make a complete end of legislation 
concerning banks and banking, as they would cease to need any; 
they being relegated to their proper sphere, that of private or indi¬ 
vidual action; and the “resumption of specie payments” might very 
properly be ranked among the “lost arts,” and all the fuss and 
bother now exercised over this£)o??.s asinorum of the “specie basis ” 
doctors, be directed to the settlement of the “ Cuban question.” 
The adoption of such a system of finance might virtually be 
called, “an act for the resumption of business,” as it would give 
immediate stability to all values, and therefore permanence to all 
mercantile transactions, it being as truly “elastic” as the laws of 
trade; truly automatic; ebbing and flowing with the volume of 
business; not artificially or arbitrarily, as when fixed in amount by 
legal provisions. 
But we stated at the outset that the material of which we pro¬ 
posed to erect our structure had all been tested in actual use, not 
exactly in the same form as in the “American monetary system,” 
which we propose to inaugurate, but mostly fragmentary, in con¬ 
nection with a “ gold- or coin-basis ” currency. As the monetary 
structure of Great Britain is so often referred to as a sample of wis¬ 
dom and stability, we will first look there for precedents, although 
on general principles we do not rety on “ precedents ” so much as 
on common-sense and sound logic. 
The English consol is simply the English debt funded in a 3 per 
