3 under his official signature? Where are we to get the facts if not from this high officer, acting under the responsibilities of his official oath ? These plans of the Secretary commend themeelves to my judgment as. the correct steps toward a healthy and sound state of things. They are all that any Democrat, considering the condition of the country and the existence of a fearful civil war, should expect or demand. The Secretary has a right to the support of this House in his efforts to approach a more solid Bystem of finance. So long as he seeks to carry out these principles 1 shall support them to the best of my ability, because by this course I support the best intersts of all classes and conditions of men. I support the means whereby the Government hopes to check expansion, undue prices, restrict speculation, restore confidence, and diminish the public expenses. Sir, holding these views, nothing could justify me certainly in withholding my aid from the accomplishment of this great effort to reduce the issue of paper money and to check the inflation now rushing like a whirlwind over the country, and this, unhappily, because of the too general ignorance of our real resources, and of the exact character of the public debt. On page 8 of the Secretary’s report we find the estimated condition of the public finances up to the 1st of July, 1864, and the estimated total debt up to the 1st of July, 1865. On the 1st of July, 1864, the public debt will be $1,686,946,- 641, of which $400 000,000is currency. Ou the 1st of July, 1865, it will be $2,231,935,190, of which $400,000,000 is still to be the currency. It follows, then, that the funded ormerchantable debt will, on the 1st of July, 1863, be $1,286, • 956,641, and on the 1st of July, 1865, 1,831,935 190, without the $400,000,000 of currency. It will be remarked that I class all but -the $400,- ®00,000 legal tender as funded debt, and that I assume that the extreme limit of this kind of I money has been reached, that it will never be । exceeded; and here permit me to repeat that I base this emphatic declaration on the language of the Secretary’s report, that admits of no other interpretation. I now propose to make this clear to the House and to the country. The $400,000,000 legal tender, drawing five per cent, interest, and now being paid out by the Secretary, redeemable in one or two years,iis, like the rest of the funded debt, a merchantable article, partaking of the character of the English exchequer bill. It varies in price according to the value of money. It increases in value daily by the augmentation of interest. It may float as Currency for a few days after it is issued, but presently it is absorbed ; it disappears from the market. At its maturity it must be paid. It differs from the currency in so far as it is made payable at a given date, and draws interest up to a given time. The debt certificates which are paid out by the Secretary are also merchantable. They are bought, and sold for money. They occupy the same relation to the capital that any promissory note occupies. They are made payable at specific times, and draw interest at six per cent. They are not currency. The long loan of the Government is like any other funded debt; and so, Mr. Speaker, out of $1,600 000 000 of d*bt created thus far, but $400,000,000 is currency. The national bank currency act for the creation of $300 000,000 circulation of uniform value throughout the United States I understand as being designated to supersede the local State bank currency of the country; that it is simply the substitution of one plan for another—a plan which is regarded by the Secretary as the most suitable in time of war, calculated to strengthen the national credit, provide a means for the sale of Government debt in considerable quantities, and prepare the way for a resumption of specie payments as well as the gradual displacement of the legal tenders. It does not look to an increase of the currency. The sew system comes into existence as t'he old system expires. There is no need, therefore, of any fresh alarm from this source. Congress may be called upon to modify the law of the last session on this subject, that the machine may work with perfect smoothness, but I think it will be demonistrated that, at the time the currency of the State banks is to cease to exist, that by enabling laws, or by other processes the banks themselves can readily pass under the new system. It therefore follows that no new device for the creation of more paper money is to be found in this bill. I ana not prepared to say, in view of the fact of the introduction of the legal tender currency during the war as an absolute necessity, and of its necessary existence to a greater or lesser degree for a time after the termination of the war, that the national bank currency act will not prove to * be a wise and beneficent measure, calculated, as suggested by the Secretary, to insure an early return to specie payments, without the disorders and convulsions that have heretofore followed directly in the wake of great financial changes, and especially such a change as the substitution of specie payments for those of paper. A careful examination of this great question is certainly demanded by the’best interests of the people, and I propose to give it the best attention of which I am capable before deciding upon my future course in the matter. I shall, however, examine it on its merits in connection with the probable wants of the country growing out of the war, and purely as a question of finance in which every human being in the nation is directly interested. Mr. Speaker, the people buy the funded debt of. the United- States for income. They buy it with a full knowledge of all the circumstances under which it is created. They buy it on the credit of the nation, on its resources, on the present and prospective magnitude of its population and its productive ower. They buy o.n the past history of the country, on its rapid growth, on.its unsurpassed prospects for the future. They believe in the perpetuation of our institutions and in the preservation of our national unity. They believe in but one Government over our vast domain. They believe in the value of one million square miles of public lands west of the Missouri; in the thousands of mil
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