I refer to the Public Faith, which must be sacredly preserved above all question or suspicion.

The word of our Nation must be as good as its bond; and nobody must attempt to take a tittle from either.

Let the Public Faith be preserved, and all that you now seek will be easy.

Every obligation is like a landmark, not to be removed without curses.

Public Faith may be seen in the evil which springs from its loss and in the good which overflows from its preservation.

It is like honor: and yet, once lost, more than dishonor is the consequence; once assured, more than honor is the reward.

It is a possession surpassing all others in value.

The gold and silver in your Treasury may be counted; it stands recorded, dollar for dollar, in the national ledger; but the sums which the unsuspected credit of a magnanimous nation can command are beyond the record of any ledger.

Public Faith is more than mines of silver or gold.

Public Faith is in itself a treasury, a tariff, and an internal revenue, all in one.

With Public Faith as an unfailing law, the Nation, like Pactolus, will sweep over golden sands; or, like Midas, it will change into gold whatever it touches.

Keep, then, the Public Faith as the “open sesame” to all that you can desire; keep it as you would keep the philosopher’s stone of fable, having which, you have all.

And yet, in the face of this plain commandment, on which hangs so much of all that is most prized in national existence, we are called to break faith.

It is proposed to tax the national bonds, in violation of the original bargain on which the money was lent.

The power to do this wrong you may possess, but the right never.

Do what you will, there is one thing you cannot do: you cannot make wrong right.

It is in vain that you undertake to set aside the perpetual obligation which you have assumed.

Against every such pretension, whether by speech or vote, there is this living duty, which will survive Congress and politician alike.

Puny as the hand of a child is the effort to undo this original bargain.

Of course, by taxing the bonds the bargain is brutally broken,--and this, too, after the Nation has used the money.

A proud Nation, justly sensitive to national honor, as the great Republic through whose example liberal institutions are commended to mankind, cannot do this thing.

The proposition to tax the bonds, in open violation of the original bargain, is similar in spirit to that other enterprise, which, under various discordant ensigns, proposes to pay the national bonds with inconvertible paper.

Here at once, and on the threshold, Public Faith interposes a summary protest.

On such a question debate even is dangerous; the man who doubts is lost.

The money was borrowed and lent on the undoubting faith that it was to be paid in coin.