Advocates of protection had found the drain of our specie the proximate cause of the financial panic of 1857.

They now believed that the same cause had produced a suspension of coin payment at a much earlier date than the war pressure alone would have brought it about.

They did not lose the opportunity of demonstrating that a system of protection which would have manufactured more and imported less, and which would thus have retained many millions of our specie at home, would have enabled us to meet the…

If the Morrill Tariff had been enacted four years before, it would have been impossible for Secretary Cobb to stab the national credit.

He would have been dealing constantly with a surplus instead of a deficit, and could not have put the nation to shame by forcing it to hawk its paper in the money markets at the usurious rate of one per cent. a month.

We were engaged therefore in a threefold contest,--a military one with the Confederacy, and diplomatic and moral one with the governments of England and France, a financial one with the money power of Europe.

The banks of the country, many of them in reckless, speculative hands, were freed by the suspension of specie payment from their just responsibility, and might flood the country with worthless paper which would entail great distress upon…

The Treasury notes not being paid in coin on demand, as promised on their face, became discredited to such a degree that the banks of the leading commercial cities would receive them only as a special deposit, and not as money of account.

Never in the history of national progress through trials and crises, were wise statesmanship and financial sagacity more imperatively demanded.

The Rebels might fight without money, for they had no national credit to protect; but to the Union, bankruptcy meant final and hopeless ruin.

That was demanded to pay the debt of honor due to the soldiers; to remove stagnation in business; to put the people in heart and hope.

It had been demonstrated that Treasury notes, without punctual and regular redemption, would not circulate.

It was obviously impossible to conduct the business of the country and to carry on the war, in coin payments, with the small amount of coin at command.

Few would insist upon coin, but as the power to insist upon it was a legal right, it was a continuing menace to the confidence of trade.

In the opinion of the majority, the one imperative duty was that the government should take control of the currency, issue its own paper as a circulating medium, and make it equal and alike to all, by declaring it to be a legal-tender in…

It was admitted to be a doubtful if not dangerous exercise of power; but the law of necessity overrides all other laws, and asserts its right to govern.

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.

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…

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.

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

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

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

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…

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.

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