ented
"the health and vigor of the athlete;" the other, "the bloated
flesh of the beer-guzzler."

Mr. Roscoe Conkling of New York expressed hearty agreement with
Mr. Lovejoy. He agreed "with some other gentleman who said that
his bill was a legislative declaration of national bankruptcy."
He agreed "with still another gentleman who said that we were
following at an humble and disgraceful distance the Confederate
Government, as it is called, which has set up the example of making
paper a legal-tender, and punishing with death those who deny the
propriety of the proposition." Mr. Conkling declared that "insolvency
is ruin and dissolution;" and he believed that "in passing this
bill, as was said by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Thomas],
we are to realize the French proposition about virtue,--that it is
the first step that costs. Another and another and another
$100,000,000 of this issue will follow. We are plunging into an
abyss from which there are to be no resuscitation and no resurrection."
Mr. Conkling thought "it right to learn of an enemy," and already
"the _London Times_ hails this $150,000,000 legal-tender bill as
the dawn of American bankruptcy, the downfall of American credit."
The public debt by the first of the ensuing July, within less than
a year from the first battle of the war, was already estimated at
$806,000,000. "Who can credit these figures," said Mr. Conkling,
"when he remembers that the world's greatest tragedian closed his
bloody drama at St. Helena leaving the public debt of France less
than seventy million of pounds?" He believed that "all the money
needed can be provided by means of unquestionable legality and
safety." He believed the substitute he had offered would effect
that result.

Mr. Hooper of Massachusetts, a man of large experience in financial
and commercial affairs, spoke ably in support of the legal-tender
clause. "No one," said he, "supposes for one moment that government
notes will be sold for coined money, or that coined money will be
borrowed on them. It is fair to suppose that the opponents of the
administration well understand that this would be the effect of
accepting the amendment to strike out the legal-tender clause from
the bill; and that their object, while they talk about coined money
to deceive some of our friends, is to oblige the government to give
up the sub-treasury, and to use for its payment the depreciated
bills of the suspended banks; thereby