voted to a nobler cause: but, in God's name, leave us the consciousness of integrity; leave us our self-respect. Delays may be inevitable; but we will pay the uttermost farthing. If the provision of the bill be not just, it is, of course, impolitic. It will wound our credit vitally. It will defeat the very end it was designed to accomplish. That credit can only be maintained as individuals or as a nation by the utmost fidelity to our engagements; by keeping our promises as we keep our oaths, — - registered in heaven. No matter what may be the resources of the country; no matter what may be its actual wealth, or its capacity to acquire it: your creditor has no lien upon your property. He can make no levy upon your lands or goods. If you refuse or fail to pay, he is without remedy. After all, his sole reliance must be upon your good faith. In the keeping of that is his security and your credit. And you cannot afford the experiment of giving him paper when you promised him money. It will cost you, in the long-run, even more than it will cost him. This provision of the bill, in the nature of a forced loan, is itself a confession of weakness. It seeks to compel credit for the reason that it does not come spontaneously. It assumes that force is necessary to uphold that which must stand on its own legs, or cannot stand at all. Credit is faith, is trust, is confidence. If you faithfully keep your promises; if by taxation you avail yourselves of all the resources of the country for the salvation of the country; if you keep always in view the end for which this conflict is waged; if, in seek ing to enforce the Constitution and the laws, you show a readiness yourselves to obey the Constitution and the laws, you will win credit: you cannot command or enforce it. It will follow in the footsteps of rectitude: you cannot drive it before you. You may by this bill say that paper is money; give the same name to things vitally different. The essential difference will be none the less clearly perceived and strongly felt. It is no want of respect to say to you, You cannot change the nature of things. The friends of this feature of the bill, Mr. Chairman, admit the reluctance with which they assent to it. The only ground of defence is its necessity; that no alternative is left to us. I respect their motives: I cannot see the necessity. We have spent a great deal of money in this war, and have wasted a great deal. But we are not impoverished. What we have spent is trivial in comparison to what is left. The amount up to this time will not exceed two years of surplus profits. It is not more than one thirty-second part of our whole property. Not a dollar of tax has been raised; and yet we are talking of national bankruptcy, and launching upon a paper currency. I may be very dull; but I cannot see the necessity or the wisdom of such a course. Gentlemen who appreciate the perils of this step would relieve themselves and us by the assurance, that the amount of paper to be issued is restricted within. safe bounds. These barriers are easily surmounted. It is the first step which .costs. The descent has always been easy. The difficulty is return. The experience of mankind shows the danger in entering upon this path; that boundaries are fixed only to be overrun, promises made only to be broken. Human nature remains essentially the same. We are neither wiser nor better than our fathers. The theatre changes, but not the actors or the drama. In speaking of emissions of paper-money, Hamilton, the greatest of our statesmen, and the most sagacious of our financiers, says,— "The wisdom of the Government will be shown in never trusting itself with the use of so seducing and dangerous an expedient. In times of tranquillity, it might have no ill consequence; it might even perhaps be managed in a way to be productive of good: but, in great and trying emergencies, there is almost a moral certainty of its becoming mischievous. The stamping of paper is an operation so much easier than the laying of taxes, that a government in the practice of paper emissions, would rarely fail, in any such emergency, to indulge itself too far in the employment of that resource, to avoid, as much as possible, one less auspicious to present popularity." Hamilton's Works, vol. iii. p. 124. The ordinary check, the only effectual check, in the issue of paper for currency, the security of the public against excess in its issue, is that the excess will be returned upon the banks for gold and silver. A certain amount is needed for the purposes of the currency. When that point is reached, the paper begins to decline, the gold and silver are demanded, and the issues of paper are contracted. If there be an excess of gold and silver, it will right itself by exportation, or find its way into the arts. To the issue of this paper there is no natural check or restraint. When it begins to depreciate, the necessity is at once created for increasing the issues; public distrust is increased; and this again leads to still further depreciation and to still larger issues. The process of decline is easy, natural, inevitable. The results are the familiar things of history: prices expand; "new ways to pay old debts" are opened; the hearts of men glow as with new wine. But all is unreal: not a farthing is added to the substantial wealth of the country. The seeming prosperity, "having no root in itself, abides but for a time." The contraction and depression are as rapid and as great as were the rise and exaltation; and men come down from the cloud-land to mourn over blighted hopes and broken promises and wasted fortunes, and to feel soberly that the laws of nature and of Providence are stronger than the laws or the hopes of men. One thing to be noted is, that the heaviest share of the burden always falls upon labor. Never were wiser words than those of Mr. Webster: "Of all contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than that which deluded them with paper-money. Ordinary tyranny, oppression, excessive taxation, these bear lightly on the mass of the community, compared with fraudulent currencies and the robberies committed by depreciated paper." A word, Mr. Chairman, and I will relieve the patience of the Committee. It has been said that coming generations ought to bear a large part of the expenses of this war, and that we may therefore justly create a large public debt. A debt will doubtless be created; but the burdens of the war ought, as far as possible, to fall upon the men of this generation. We are but keeping in repair the structure of our fathers, not building |