The legal-tender note, which we wish to expel from our currency, has two different characters: first, as mere currency, for use in the transactions of business; and, secondly, as real value, from the assurance that ultimately it will be…

Our desire is to make them convertible,--in other words, the equivalent of coin in value, dollar for dollar.

The present proposition for funding is an excellent measure for this purpose, being at once simple and practical: not that it contains any direct promise for the redemption of our currency, but because it places the national debt on a…

By this change three things essential to financial reconstruction are promoted: economy, stability, and national credit.

Another measure of immediate value is the legalization of contracts in coin, so that henceforth all agreements made in coin may be legally enforced in coin or its equivalent.

Against the movement for contraction, which is commended by its simplicity and its tendency to a normal condition of things, we have two adverse policies,--one, the stand-still policy, and the other, worse yet, the policy of inflation.

Better stand still than move in a wrong direction.

By the latter the currency is enlarged at the expense of the people,--being at once a tax and a derangement of values.

You pamper the morbid appetite for paper money, and play the discarded part of John Law.

You blow up a bladder, without thinking that it is nothing but a bladder, ready to burst.

As the volume of currency is increased, the purchasing power of each dollar is reduced in proportion.

As you add to the currency, you take from the dollar.

You do little more than mark your goods at higher prices, and imagine that they have increased in value.

With so great an object in view, I do not doubt its accomplishment at an early day, if the Nation only wills it.

How vain it is to expect Financial Reconstruction until Political Reconstruction has been completed I have already shown.

How vain to expect specie payments until the Nation has once more gained its natural vigor, and it has become one in reality as in name!

Let this be, and the Nation will be like a strong man, in the full enjoyment of all his forces, coping with the trials of life.

Therefore, so long as Andrew Johnson is President, the return to specie payments is impossible.

So long as a great party, called Democratic, better now called Rebel, wars on that Political Reconstruction which Congress has organized, there can be no specie payments.

So long as any President, or any political party, denies the Equal Rights of the freedman, it is vain to expect specie payments.

Whoso would have equity must do equity; and now, if you would have specie payments, you must do this great equity.

Repudiation in all its forms, direct or indirect, whether of the freedman or the bond-holder, must be repudiated.

The freedman and bond-holder are under the same safeguard, and there is the same certain disaster from any repudiation of either.

Unless the Public Faith is preserved inviolate, you cannot fund your debt at a smaller interest, you cannot convert your greenbacks, you cannot comply with the essential terms of Reconstruction.

Amid all surrounding abundance you are poor and powerless, for you are dishonored.