Could I have my way, I would treat the whole financial question as a unit, providing at the same time for all the points involved in what I have called Financial Reconstruction.

This reserve must bear a proportion to the aggregate of liabilities so large as to remove mistrust, and this can be accomplished only by presenting as in the vaults of the Treasury an amount of coin nearly equal to the sum of liabilities.

The amendment of which I have given notice has the twofold object of the pending bill: first, to enlarge the currency; and, secondly, to change the existing banking system, so as to provide practically for free banking and to enlarge…

And here is a just and much-needed economy,--just to the Government, and not unjust to the banks.

It is in two conspicuous forms that Repudiation flaunts: first, in the barefaced proposition to tax the bonds, contrary to the contract at the time the money was lent; and the other, not less barefaced, to pay interest-bearing bonds with…

To tax the bonds is to break the contract because you have the power.

It is an imitation of the Roman governor, a lieutenant of Cæsar, who, after an agreement by the people of Gaul to pay a certain subsidy monthly, arbitrarily changed the number of months to fourteen.

The subtraction from the interest by taxation is kindred in dishonesty to the increase of the Gaulish subsidy by adding to the months.

But there can be no rule of good faith binding on private individuals which is not binding on the Nation, while there are exceptional reasons for extraordinary scrupulousness on the part of the Nation.

As the transaction is vast, and especially as the Nation is conspicuous, what is done becomes an example to the world which history cannot forget.

There is another reason, founded on the helpless condition of the creditor, who has no power to enforce his claim, whether of principal or interest.

His claims are doubly binding who trusts to the rectitude of another.” This is only according to an admitted principle in the Laws of War, constraining the stronger power to the best of faith in dealing with a weaker power, because the…

This benign principle, borrowed from the Laws of War, cannot be out of place in the Laws of Peace; and I invoke it now as a sufficient protection against taxation of the bonds, even if common sense in its plainest lessons, and the rule of…

The cheat of paying interest-bearing bonds in promises without interest is kindred in character to that of taxing the bonds.

No subtlety of technicality, no ingenuity of citation, no skill in arranging texts of statutes, can make it anything else.

Do you seek stability in the currency, with the assurance of solid business, so that extravagance and gambling speculations shall cease?

Just in proportion as this is discredited, the Nation is degraded and impoverished.

If nobody had breathed Repudiation, we should all be richer, and the national debt would be at a lower interest, saving to the Nation millions of dollars annually.

Talk of taxation; here is an annual tax of millions imposed by these praters of Repudiation.

Bankruptcy has its tragedies hardly inferior to those which throb beneath the “sceptred pall.

Similar misconduct among us must result in similar consequences, with all the tragedies of bankruptcy.

Not a bank, not a corporation, not an institution of charity, which would not suffer,--each sweeping multitudes into the abyss which it could not avoid.

Business would be disorganized, values would be uncertain; nobody would know that the paper in his pocket to-day would buy a dinner to-morrow.

It is hard to think of the poor, or of those who depend on daily wages, under the trials of this condition.

The rich may, for the time, live from their abundance; but the less favored class can have no such refuge.