Let us now revise it carefully, place it on sure, but moderate foundations, so that it will have in itself the elements of future stability.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
gutenberg.org
If you allow the banks gains that are too large, there will necessarily be a constant opposition, growing and developing as their gains become more conspicuous.
I may be voted down; perhaps I shall be; but I shall make a motion, in the honest endeavor to render this bill a practical measure, which can best succeed.
I call it Financial Reconstruction; and in this work ought not the banks to take their place and perform their part?
I find nothing in it but a simple measure in harmony with this great process of Financial Reconstruction in which we are now engaged.
To my mind it is clear; it is absolutely within the province of Congress, in the exercise of the discretion which it originally retained over this whole subject.
Is it not right for Congress to require that?
I cannot doubt that Congress may rightfully exercise what I cannot doubt is an existing power.
Now is there not here a right as well as a power?
A nation or an individual may have a power without right.
A great, broad, vital distinction there always is between power and right.
But we are reminded that there is a difference between power and right.
Shall this effort of ours to readjust our finances and to save this large interest to our country be thwarted by a pretension on the part of the banks that we have not the power to interfere?
May not the Government insist that they shall do their part on this great occasion?
To a certain extent the banks are in partnership with the Government.
May not the country turn around and ask the banks to do their part in this great work of renovation?
Nobody can say safely that what is now proposed is not within the power of Congress.
That system may be readjusted, modified, shaped anew, and the banks cannot complain.
Because they have a meaning; because they reserve to Congress what I call plenary power over the whole system.
I submit that the pending measure sacrifices the present.
The future has its great claims upon us; so also has the present.
A less ambitious effort on our part will be less obnoxious to attack,--thus leaving the bonds to their natural position in the money market, and strengthening all the movements of commerce.
If we assume obligations so large as to bear heavily upon the business of the country and to compel unreasonable taxation, there will be little chance of financial stability.
Promising too much is sometimes as bad as promising too little.
Whatever we owe must be paid; but it is the part of prudence to make the payment in such way as, while consistent with our obligations, shall promote the national prosperity.
Politicians like Charles Sumner
