No one then questioned either the policy, the duty, or the obligation of the United States to redeem these notes in coin.

We may well pause to examine how this plain and positive obligation has so long been deferred by a nation always sensitive to the public honor.

This act, though convenient in its temporary results, was a most fatal step, and for my part in acquiescing in, and voting for it, I have felt more regret than for any act of my official life.

Here again the opportunity was lost to secure the easy and natural appreciation of our notes to the gold standard.

If the advocates for specie payment had then supported a restoration of the right to convert notes into bonds, they would have secured their object with but little opposition.

Without adding one dollar to the public debt, or the burden of the debt, both bonds and notes rose in value.

The notes rose under the stimulus of this new promise, in one year, from seventy-six cents to eighty-nine cents in gold, but no steps whatever were made to redeem them.

The note holder, the farmer, the artisan, the laborer, whose labor and production is measured in greenbacks, still receives your depreciated notes, worth ten per cent. less than gold you promised him 'at the earliest day practicable.' The…

But, sir, at this critical moment, the Secretary of the Treasury, acting, no doubt, in good faith, but I think without authority of law, issued twenty-six millions more United States notes--part of the notes retired and canceled under…

There was and is now great difference of opinion as to the details, but the vital promise made to the note holder to make his note as good as gold in January, 1879, was concurred in by a large majority of both Houses, and by many who…

This act of honor and public faith was applauded by the civilized world and concurred in by our constituents, the doubts only being as to the machinery to carry it into effect.

Yet it is proposed to recall our promise to redeem this note in coin three years hence.

It would destroy the confidence with which the public creditor rests upon the promises contained in your bonds.

It would weaken in the public mind that keen sense of honor and pride which has always distinguished the English-speaking nations in dealing with public obligations.

Credit never was chained to men's names, but to their actions; not to families, clans, or collections of men; no, not to nations.

It is the honor, the justice, the fair dealing, and the equal conduct of men, bodies of men, nations, and people, that raise the thing called credit among them.

Wheresoever this is found, credit will live and thrive, grow and increase; where this is wanting, let all the power and wit of man join together, they can neither give her being nor preserve her life.

The force of art, assisted by the punctual, fair, and just dealing abovesaid, may have done much to form a credit upon the face of things, but we find still the honor would have done it without the art, but never the art without the honor.

That act was generally regarded as the settlement of a financial policy by which at least the party in power is bound, and upon the faith of which business men have conducted their affairs and made their contracts.

Debts have been contracted and paid with the expectation that at the time fixed the gold standard would measure all obligations, and a repeal of the act would now reopen all the wild and dangerous speculation schemes that feed and fatter…

If the public honor cannot protect our promise to the note holder, how shall it protect our promise to the bondholder?

Already do we see advocated in high places, by numerous and formidable organizations, all forms of repudiation, which, if adopted, would reduce our nation to the credit of a robber chief--worse than the credit of an Algerine pirate, who at…

And when the process of repudiation goes so far that your notes will not buy bread, why then declare against all interest, and then, after passing through the valley of humiliation, return again to barter, and honor, and gold again.

You may, like Mirabeau and the Girondists, seek to stem the torrent, but you will be swept away by the spirit you have evoked and the instrument you have created.

I worked hard that winter, for hard work, I thought, was the way to fortune.