"212 
Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
the State to furnish its people with currency; that the public should 
be supplied with money, as it is with bread or coal, by individual 
enterprise; that legislative interference in this direction is alwaj^s 
mischievous; that the State discharges its whole duty, in this con¬ 
nexion, when it insists upon a rigid performance of contracts; that 
a proper and self-regulating adjustment of the volume of currency 
can only be provided by a system of bank-issues duly controlled by 
law. And indeed it is not easy to see how, under govermental manage¬ 
ment, a spontaneous adaptation of the currency to the necessities of 
business can obtain unless the government adds the somewhat com¬ 
plicated machinery of banking to the operations of the Treasury 
Department, which no one as yet has been so u progressive 11 as to 
propose. 
But these are questions which will not be opened here, as they 
would needlessly complicate the main question of resumption; and 
it may be admitted, therefore, for present purposes, that the power 
of issue is a sovereign right; that the government should take up¬ 
on itself the manufacture and issuance of currency, and that the 
profits thereof should no longer fall into private hands, but should 
be claimed by the government and applied to the reduction of tax¬ 
ation. 
This admission, however, is a very slight step toward an endorse¬ 
ment of the interconvertible-note scheme. We are, very properly, 
disposed to be exacting as to the kind of service we receive at the 
hands of the government, and certainly in this matter pride, pat¬ 
riotism, and self-interest unite in demanding that the currency to 
be furnished shall, in quality, be second to none. Our present sup¬ 
ply cannot be so described, even if there be those who enthusiasti¬ 
cally call it the “best money the world ever saw.” Why? Be¬ 
cause, of the highest functions of money, some are but imperfectly 
filled by it, and others not at all. 
1. As “a medium of exchange” it is restricted in its action, be¬ 
ing unfit to take any part in international exchanges. 
2. It is not a u common and stable measure of value,” but a local 
and fluctuating one, recognized only within the limits of the United 
States, and, indeed, not so widely, for in a vast and important por¬ 
tion of our territory it has never come into use, nor is there any 
present prospect of its doing so. These might be unimportant 
points if we intended to emulate the example of China, and wall 
