the gentleman convicts me of conspicuous inaccuracy in that regard. He is right in the correction. I was right in my notes, but I humbly bow to his correction of my print. But the gentleman denies there is any such thing as international currency. Did he suppose I was talking about a common coined piece of money, agreed upon among the nations, such as he was trying to secure in our coinage some years ago? Not at all. It was plain, I think, to every one who heard me, that I was speaking of coin which the whole world recognizes as money, and that all our foreign trade is measured in that coined money of the world. Now, the gentleman did not need to tell us that only balances were paid for in actual money. Any one who has looked into the horn-books of finance knows that. But while only balances are paid for in coin, the value of every pound of merchandise imported or exported is measured in coin; and that is the ground on which I based my demand for a coinage for America, a money for America which can be used for international as well as for national exchanges. The next point the gentleman makes is this: He thinks my reference to resumption in England was exceedingly unfortunate, and my citations of authorities inaccurate. He has consulted Allibone to find a threeline notice, how great a financial writer Doubleday was-and would have us believe that because Alison wrote a history, his views of finance must · be sound. But I notice that neither the gentleman nor his "coach," Mr. Schuckers, who addressed to the gentleman not less than twenty pamphlet pages on the subject of my November speech, has been able to argue away the stubborn fact that in 1821, and again in 1822, the House of Commons, by a vote first of 5 to 1, and then of 6 to 1, declared that the resumption act of 1819 did not cause the distress which then prevailed. When they have proved that they know more on the subject than the House of Commons, it will be in order to appeal to Alison and Doubleday, and to assail me for supposing that the Parliament of Great Britain is a fair index of British opinion. I referred to a chapter of Martineau's History of England, in which the causes of the distress were set forth as being those I alleged, and stated that Thomas Tooke in his History of Prices held the same opinion. The gentleman from Pennsylvania denies that Tooke holds the opinions I attributed to him; and Mr. Schuckers disposes of Miss Martineau by saying she was "of all human animals the most forlorn, a woman atheist-whose narration is a mere reiteration of Mr. Tooke's, whose follower she was. 99 In answer to the gentleman's denial I quote from volume 2, page 76, of Tooke's great work: Never indeed was there a measure dictated by a sounder policy than that by which Parliament determined in 1819 that the trifling divergence which then existed between the paper and the gold should, as speedily as was conveniently practicable. be remedied, and the convertibility restored with the strongest sanction against its being again suspended. So loudly was that measure called for by every consideration of justice and good faith, and of the most comprehensive view of the public interest, that if, for the purpose of carrying it into effect, some actual derangement of prices and of credit had been distinctly contemplated, the effect would have been amply justified by the object. But there is not the vestige of a ground for supposing that the smallest part of the fall of prices, or of the derangement of credit in 1819, or from 1819 to 1822, can according to any evidence of facts, or any consistent reasoning, be traced to the operatlon, direct or indirect, of that measure. The sufficiency of the causes, without reference to Peel's bill, of the fall of prices between 1818 and 1822, can hardly it is presumed admit of a doubt in the mind of any person who, unbiased by a preconceived theory, will examine carefully the facts as they will appear in evidence in connection with the fall of prices. *Judge Kelley, in quoting Allibone's notice of Alison's works, has mistaken "8 vo for eight volumes, and so has expanded a small pamphlet into " a magnificent treatise in eight volumes." For Tooke's analysis of the corn laws, and their effects on prices and panics, I refer him to the first sixty-seven pages of volume 3. The main facts to which I referred in regard to resumption in England remain unchallenged. My statement that no writer of eminence could be found who takes the opposite view was doubtless too broad. I have never said that resumption was accomplished or ever can be accomplished without some hardship. The process is always more or less severe. And perhaps I understand the strength of British opinion that the resumption act of 1819 produced some distress. But what I did say remains unanswered, and I will venture to say unanswerable. It was that the opinion of Parliament, the recognized official opinion of England, expressed in the most decided and emphatic terms, was that the resumption of cash payments was a great blessing, a wise and necessary act of restoration after war. The opinion is now held and has been held for more than half a century by a great majority of Englishmen. The gentleman criticises me on another point: he says there are not $65,000,000 of coin reserve in the Treasury available for resumption, and that there are not $5,000,000 a month coming into the Treasury to add to that reserve. Does he forget that what I said was spoken one hundred and nine days ago? What I said was true on the day I uttered it, by the authority of the Secretary of the Treasury. But I also said that here in Congress was the storm-centre of danger. Will the gentleman deny that agitation we have had here since November has increased the public distress and retarded our progress toward resumption. I do not revive the discussion of the silver bill. I hope that question is now settled; that the agitation is calmed, and that we may go forward into whatever of prosperity is possible for us; and I shall be glad if that measure turns out to be wise. But it is a poor answer to my facts stated one hundred and nine days ago, to say that the $5,000,000 of coin are not now being added to the resumption fund each month, as they were then. The gentleman says that the great trouble with all our affairs is and has been the fatal contraction of our currency, begun outrageously by Hugh McCulloch in 1865, and continued in 1866. Mr. Chairman, here is a little history which I wish to read. The years he named were 1865 and 1866. On the 18th day of December, 1865, the following resolution was introduced into the House of Representatives: Resolved, That this House cordially concurs in the views of the Secretary of the Treasury (Hugh McCulloch) in relation to the necessity of a contraction of the currency, with a view to as early a resumption of specie payments as the business interests of the country will admit; and we hereby pledge co-operative action to this end as speedily as practicable. Here are the yeas and nays recorded upon the Journal of the House: 144 yeas, and 6 nays; and among the yeas I read the name of WILLIAM D. KELLEY. [Laughter and applause.] Mr. BROWNE. Do you find the name of VOORHEES on the list? Mr. GARFIELD. I did not look, but a gentleman near me has the Journal, and says it is among the yeas. This reminds me of a little scene that occurred here. not many months ago, in the beginning of the silver agitation, when we heard the voice of the titular "father of the House" denouncing the demonetization of silver in 1873 as a legislative tr-r-r-ick. [Laughter.] And yet, when that bill was before the House for action, that same gentleman, then chairman of the committee that framed the bill, assured the House that the committee had considered its provisions carefully and were satisfied that it ought to pass, and that it was useless to attempt to continue the coinage of the silver dollar; that they had dropped because gold fluctuated so continually that the double standard could not be maintained. Doubtless every man is entitled to change his opinions, and it is often wise to change them. But these examples ought to teach the gentleman, when he assails his brethren here for their opinions, to look well to the house in which he lives and see how many glass windows it contains. [Laughter and applause.] Mr. Chairman, his speech from beginning to end was a mere criticism of the little details of my speech. If everything he said were granted, it does not touch whatever of small strength there was in my argument. In the main he busied himself with a fact here and there, a quotation, a citation, or reference; but it did not touch the marrow of what I tried to present. The central proposition of my speech was that the greenback currency was a debt to be paid; that by all the solemn sanctions of law, of honor, of duty, we are bound to make these notes equal to coin, to redeem them. And it is precisely that which displeased the gentleman. It does not answer my proposition to ramble over the speech and pick up a morsel here and there; to leave the line of debate and become what the Grecians called a spermologos-a picker-up of bird-seed, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. In my opinion, Mr. Chairman, the essence of this whole matter will be found in this: The gentleman from Pennsylvania is not content with the legislation we have had. He denounced silver when it was first proposed as a subsidiary coinage in place of paper scrip, and sought to laugh it out of the House. But it so happens that the wind now sits in another quarter. He and some other financiers of the new school accept the silver bill only as a step to the next stage of controversy. It is not the silver dollar but the unlimited, irredeemable paper dollar to which they cry "All hail! that shall be king. hereafter." The programme of these advocates of "fiat money" is beginning to appear. We had it in a powerful speech made by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. BUTLER] a few days since, in which he said: I want that dollar stamped upon some convenient and cheap material of the least possible intrinsic value, so that neither its wear nor its destruction will be any loss to the Government issuing it. I also desire the dollar to be made of such material for the purpose that it shall never be exported or desirable to carry out of the country. Framing an American system of finance, I do not propose to adapt it to the wants of any other nation and especially the Chinese, who are nearly one-quarter of the world. I desire that the dollar so issued shall never be redeemed. This is the new battle-line on which these champions of the new system of American finance challenge all men of both parties who believe in gold and silver coin and paper exchangeable for coin, to join issue. They wish to strike from our law the nation's promise and pledge to redeem its notes. They wish to supersede the “barbarism of gold and silver" by a coinage of paper; and in the kingdom to be, when paper, wild, shoreless, bottomless, and worthless, has become the currency of this country, then will the time arrive, welcomed by the apostles of the new finance, when our bonds will not only come back to this country but will depreciate to fifty cents on the dollar. This is the very essence of communism. For years the gentleman from Pennsylvania has advocated a nonexportable currency. "Non-exportable?" Every damaged manufacture is non-exportable. They want our currency to be made so bad that no nation under heaven will touch it. This doctrine of the nonexportability of paper money was born in the brain of John Law and announced by him one hundred and seventy years ago, as clearly as it has ever been announced by the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. KELLEY] or the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. BUTLER.] If I read aright, the signs in the political horizon the time is just at hand when men who love their country, its honor and its plighted faith, men of both political parties, will stand together against this new heresy known as "American finance." It was in the spirit of this same doctrine that the gentleman from Pennsylvania two years ago went to Ohio, to the borders of my district, to the leading town in the district of my colleague here [Mr. McKINLEY] and at a time of strikes in the centre of that great iron region, when the question between capital and labor, between employers and employed, had been pushed to the verge of violence, addressed an excited throng; and, if the papers did not report him incorrectly, he warned the mill-owners, the capitalists, that the time was not far distant when labor would take capital by the throat. We came near having scenes of riot awakened by the wild flash of his communistic torch. He sought not only to destroy his party in Ohio, but to elect to our governorship a man who denounced gold and silver coin as a barren ideality. The people of the gentleman's district were not inclined to forget these things when the elections of last year were coming on; and there are men now on this floor who courteously and tenderly, because of his years, ability, and long service, wrote to his people advising them to trust him again, and expressing the belief that the scenes of 1876 would not be repeated. And on those assurances he is here to-day; here to-day to assail those who believe in redeeming the plighted promises of the nation. On the issue which he and his associates raise, my choice has long since been made. It is an issue of such transcendent importance that it may render all others obsolete. It is the struggle of honor against dishonor; of law against anarchy; a struggle in which the peace and safety of both employer and employed, Government and people, are involved. In such a contest I care not into what party the issue lands me, or in what company it finds me; when it comes I shall stand with the men who defend the money of the Constitution and the faith of this country. [Applause.] And we cannot be a moment too soon in understanding the nature and designs of those who are preparing the conflict. Mr. Chairman, I beg the pardon of the committee for delaying them from the appropriation bill by this speech, and I specially regret the necessity which compell d me to make it. [Mr. GARFIELD resumed his seat amid great applause.] |