While we use a currency not
equivalent to this standard the world's recognized standard, specie,
becomes a commodity like the products of the soil, the surplus seeking
a market wherever there is a demand for it.
Under our present system we should want none, nor would we have any,
were it not that customs dues must be paid in coin and because of the
pledge to pay interest on the public debt in coin. The yield of precious
metals would flow out for the purchase of foreign productions and leave
the United States "hewers of wood and drawers of water," because of
wiser legislation on the subject of finance by the nations with whom
we have dealings. I am not prepared to say that I can suggest the best
legislation to secure the end most heartily recommended. It will be a
source of great gratification to me to be able to approve any measure
of Congress looking effectively toward securing "resumption."
Unlimited inflation would probably bring about specie payments more
speedily than any legislation looking to redemption of the legal-tenders
in coin; but it would be at the expense of honor. The legal-tenders
would have no value beyond settling present liabilities, or, properly
speaking, repudiating them. They would buy nothing after debts were all
settled.
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