264 
Wisconsin - State Agricultural Society. 
sury Department of the United States, that the power of that in¬ 
stitution would be arrayed against the whole proceeding, unless we 
gave a pledge that the coin should not he removed, and that we would 
re-invest it in the bonds of the United States, as they were offered 
in the market of London. We were compelled to do it //” 
Again, we had an award at Geneva in our favor of $15,600,000, 
for the damage done to our commerce by the connivance of Eng¬ 
land with the rebel pirates. This award was to be paid in Ameri¬ 
can gold, but not a dollar in gold did we get, but we 44 traded it out 11 
for 44 store-pay.” Let Mr. Boutwell tell what he knows about this 
transaction. He said : 
44 There is another fact known to all. We received at Geneva an 
award against Great Britain of $15,500,000. When this claim was 
maturing, the banking and commercial classes of Great Britain in¬ 
duced the government to interpose, and by diplomatic arrangements 
through the State Department here, operating on the Treasury De¬ 
partment, secured the transfer of securities and thus avoided the 
transfer of coin! In the presence of these facts, is it to be assumed 
for a moment that we can go into the markets of the world and 
purchase coin with which we can redeem one, two, three, or four 
hundred millions outstanding legal-tender notes?” 
On this testimony, Mr. Drew, in his masterly expose of the folly 
of our financial system, remarks: 
44 As a necessary result of not getting the money we expected, as 
per testimony of Mr. Boutwell, we have had to take hundreds of 
millions of dollars worth of goods as per statement of Prof. Price; 
and, as a sequence, we not only find ourselves without money to 
work with, but our furnaces are blown out; our machinery rusting 
in idleness; our factories tumbling in by dry-rot; our railroad bonds 
protested for non-payment of interest; our banks stuffed with 
honey-combed collaterals; our merchants collapsing; our mechanics 
breaking stone on the highways, or eating the soup of charity; our 
prisons crowded, and the usurer and sheriff the only prosperous 
people.” 
When public attention is directed to the disastrous bent of our 
financial follies, and the laws of historical customs invoked to check 
them, and the people warned that specie-clamor is but the syren 
song to lullaby the populace to fatal slumber, while the Greeks are 
making off with the plunder, the bullionists cry out 44 croakers.” 
