James Blaine

Grateful as was the relief to the people from legal-tender notes, it was apparent to Congress that a government cannot, any more than an individual, maintain a state of solvency by the continuous issuing of irredeemable paper.

But in the judgment of a large and intelligent majority of those who were contemporary with the war and gave careful study to its progress, the legal-tender bill was a most effective and powerful auxiliary in its successful prosecution.

Argument and experience have demonstrated the fallacy of this conception, and averted the evils which might have flowed from it.

The policy of the legal-tender measure cannot therefore be properly determined if we exclude from view that which may well be termed its political and moral influence upon the mass of our people.

If it had been practicable to adhere rigidly to the specie standard, the national expenditure might have been materially reduced; but the exactions of the war would have been all the time grating on the nerves of the people and oppressing…

The political effects of the legal-tender bill were of large consequence to the Administration and to the successful conduct of the war.

The premium on gold became the measure of the depreciation of the government credit, and practically such premiums were the charge made for every loan negotiated.

The medicine of the Constitution must not become its daily bread.

But our country is rich and powerful, with a numerous population, busy, honest, and determined, and with unparalleled resources of all kinds, agricultural, mineral, industrial, and commercial.

If our country were poor or feeble, without population and without resources; if it were already drained by a long war; if the enemy had succeeded in depriving us of the means of livelihood,--then we should not even pause.

If you can violate the Constitution of the United States, in the face of your oaths, in the face of its palpable provision, what security do you offer to the lender of money?

He "would not overthrow the Constitution in the Senate Chamber while the rebels are endeavoring to overthrow it by war.

He said the legal-tender notes would be "borne up by all the faith and all the property of the people, and they will have all the value which that faith untarnished and that property inestimable can given them.

He said "the country was never so wealthy as to-day; never was so little due to foreign countries; never were the people so free from embarrassment.

The proposed issue of government notes guards against this effect of inflating the currency by the provision to convert them into government bonds, the principal and interest of which, as before stated, are payable in specie.

We are plunging into an abyss from which there are to be no resuscitation and no resurrection." Mr.

This would be honest, business- like, and in the end economical.

Every piece of paper that claimed to be money but was not, he would chase back to the man or corporation that forged it, and visit upon the criminal the penalties of the law.

If made a legal-tender, and not issued in excess of the legitimate demand, the notes will remain at par, and pass in all transactions, great and small, at the full value of their face; we shall have one currency for all sections of the…

Does he not know that such notes must be dishonored, and the plighted faith of the government be broken?

The banks would issue unlimited amounts of what would become trash, and buy good hard-money bonds of the nation.

Make a loan payable in irredeemable currency, and pay that in its depreciated condition to our contractors, soldiers, and creditors generally!

Notes not redeemable on demand, and not made a legal-tender, have never been kept at par." Even those who could use them for taxes and duties would, in Mr.

The folly of this scheme needs no illustration." Another proposition, pressed very earnestly, was to strike out the legal-tender clause, and make the notes receivable for all taxes and public dues, but not to make any provision for…

All doubts were decided in favor of the nation, in the belief that dangers which were remote and contingent could be more easily dealt with than those which were certain and imminent.