e payment? They had afloat but
L20,000,000, or $100,000,000, and they began with their one-pound
notes. In a few years they took their two-pound notes; afterward they
took their five-pound notes. But they never resumed full specie
payment until the latter part of the year 1822. Does my friend from
Illinois expect me to be wiser than the great men of England?"

"Does my friend from Pennsylvania deny," asked Mr. Garfield, "that in
1819 the law for resuming specie payment was passed, to go into effect
gradually at first, and completely in 1823, and that the full
resumption of specie payment actually took place early in the Spring
of 1821--only about a year and three-quarters from the passage of the
law?"

"Yes," answered Mr. Stevens, "except in very large sums. The law
authorized them to go on until the first of January, 1823."

"But they resumed in 1821, about a year and three-quarters earlier,"
said Mr. Garfield.

"About a year earlier," said Mr. Stevens. "But the law did not pass
until four years after the war. Do gentlemen here expect, when
England, with almost all the commerce of the world at her command, was
unable to resume specie payments for eight years after the conclusion
of her wars, and then did it by such gradual legislation that there
should be no shock to the business of the country--do gentlemen expect
that we are to put it into the power of one man to compel the
resumption of specie payments in a single year?"

"I want to know," said Mr. Wentworth, "if the power, and the
patronage, and the influence of the great Republican party, so called,
is to be used to deprive us of our natural standard of value. Now, I
wish, while we go together, to be perfectly honest. Nobody respects
the talents of my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] more than I
do. He knows more than all of us put together. [Laughter.] I want him
to state to the House, fairly and candidly, whether, if we follow him,
he will lead us to specie payment; or whether, if he could, he would."

"I will say to my friend," replied Mr. Stevens, "that in this case I
do not act as a member of the Republican party."

"I have followed the gentlemen," said Mr. Wentworth, "because I
supposed him to be a Republican leader."

"If I believed," said Mr. Stevens, "that we could resume specie
payments in a month without crushing the interests of the country,
without injuring the laborer, without breaking down the manufacturer,
without oppressing the peo