If a further issue of United States notes were authorized, it would be at once followed by the issue of more bank paper, and then we would have the wildest speculation.

The question then occurred whether the bank bill proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury, and introduced by me into the Senate, would tend to secure a national currency beyond the danger of inflation.

It would furnish a market for our bonds by requiring them to be held as the security for bank notes, and thus advance the value of the bonds.

The want of such nationality, I then declared, was one of the great evils of the times; and it was that principle of state rights, that bad sentiment that had elevated state authority above the great national authority, that had been the…

These two measures, the absorption of the state banks, and the establishment of the system of national banks, taken in connection with the legal tender act, were the most important financial measures of the war, and, tested by time, have…

This system of national banks has furnished to the people of the United States a currency combining the national faith with the private stock and private credit of individuals.

Not one dollar of the notes issued by national banks has been lost to any person through the failure of a bank.

We have a currency limited in amount, restrained and governed by law, checked by the power of visitation and by the limitation of liabilities, safe, uniform, and convertible in every part of the country.

This act also provided for the issue of a large increase of non-interest bearing treasury notes, which were made lawful money and a legal tender in payment of all debts, public or private, within the United States, except for duties on…

At the end of the war internal taxes were cheerfully paid by the people, and yielded far more revenue to the government than the customs duties and all other sources of revenue combined.

Neither of these is an article of necessity, but all are used purely to gratify an appetite, in many cases indulged to excess.

It is the cause of innumerable crimes, of poverty and distress in the family and home.

Still, it is an appetite that will be gratified, however severe may be the laws against its use, and while this habit exists the tax upon whisky, by limiting the quantity consumed, is beneficial to society at large.

The tax on tobacco and cigars is a moderate one, but the consumption of them is far less dangerous than that of spirits in their influence upon society.

All internal taxes are collected at less cost than any other form of taxation devised, and should be maintained as long as the expenses growing out of the war shall remain unpaid.

The patience and even cheerfulness with which the people of the United States submitted to this severe taxation on their domestic productions, was a matter of surprise, not only among our own people, but in European countries.

I then believed, and now believe, that a moderate income tax, levied on all incomes above the sum of $1,000, or above a sum that will supply the ordinary wants of an average family in the United States with the necessaries of life, should…

In the present condition of affairs, I doubt the expediency of such a tax, especially in view of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States recently rendered.

An income tax was paid, and cheerfully paid, by American citizens during and since the war, in vast sums, and it did not occur to citizen, lawyer or judge that the constitution of the United States made a distinction between incomes from…

This decision, if adhered to, may cripple the government in times of emergency.

I trust the time is far distant when such sweeping internal taxation will be required again, but if it should come, the Congress of that day can find in our experience resources more bountiful than Aladdin's lamp.

Besides the difficulty of collecting it, there is the palpable objection that it is an unequal, and therefore an unjust, tax.

New states, and especially agricultural states, have not the same ability to pay direct taxes as older commercial and manufacturing states, having within them great cities with accumulated wealth, in the form of stocks, bonds and patents.

I had from the beginning declared my opposition to any interference with slavery in the District, but the changed condition of the country demanded a change of public policy in this respect.

Slavery was made the pretext for, and, I believe, was, the real cause of the war.