"if soldiers, mechanics, contractors, and farmers were compelled
to take them from the government, they must submit to a heavy shave
before they could use them. The knowledge that they were provided
for by taxation, and would surely be paid twenty years hence, would
not sustain them."

To two prominent amendments which had been submitted, Mr. Stevens
manifested earnest opposition. He said "the one moved by the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Vallandigham) proposes the same issue of
notes, but objects to legal-tender, and does not provide for their
redemption in coin. He fears our notes would depreciate. Let him
who is sharp enough, instruct the House how notes that every man
must take can be less valuable than the same notes that no man need
take and few would, since they are irredeemable on demand." As to
the constitutionality of the bill, he thought that whoever "admits
our power to emit bills of credit, nowhere expressly authorized by
the Constitution, is an unreasonable doubter when he denies the
power to make them a legal-tender." "The proposition of the
gentleman from New York" (Mr. Roscoe Conkling), continued Mr.
Stevens, "authorizes the issuing of seven per cent. bonds, payable
in thirty-one years, to be sold ($250,000,000 of it) or exchanged
for the currency of the banks of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.
This suggestion seems to lack every element of wise legislation.
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. Was
there ever such a temptation to swindle? The gentleman from New
York further proposes to issue $200,000,000 United-States notes,
redeemable in coin in one year. Does he not know that such notes
must be dishonored, and the plighted faith of the government be
broken? If we are to use suspended notes to pay our expenses, why
not use our own?"

The minority of the Ways and Means Committee, through Mr. V. B.
Horton of Ohio, had submitted a plan, as Mr. Stevens characterized
it, "to issue United-States notes, not a legal-tender, bearing an
interest of three and sixty-five hundredths per cent., and fundable
in seven and three-tenths per cent. bonds, not payable on demand,
but at the pleasure of the United States. This gives one and three-
tenths per cent. higher interest than our loan,