h "gold in the
utmost abundance." To pass the legal-tender bill would, in his
judgment, be "a legislative declaration that the administration is
not equal to the occasion for which it was elected." He thought
"the time for oracular utterances about a great movement," by which
bankers had been inspired with undue hope, had passed by, and that
something practical and actual would soon be accomplished.

Mr. John B. Alley supported the bill by arguments which came from
his own wide experience in business. The choice, he said, was
between notes of the government and "an irredeemable bank currency,
a great deal of which will be found, as it was after the war of
1812, utterly worthless."

Mr. Charles W. Walton of Maine spoke briefly but ably on the
constitutional power of Congress to pass the bill. He contended
that the authority to declare a legal-tender "was an implied and
not a direct power;" that, admitting it to belong to the Government,
it exists "without limitation." The question before the House,
therefore, is "one of expediency only," and on that ground he
earnestly supported the measure.

Mr. Shellabarger of Ohio answered the "charges of bad faith and
injustice" which had been brought against the bill by its opponents.
The cry of ruin to the country he compared with similar fears for
England on the part of her economists, and showed how, in every
case, they had been disproved by the rising power and growing wealth
of that kingdom. He said the legal-tender notes would be "borne
up by all the faith and all the property of the people, and they
will have all the value which that faith untarnished and that
property inestimable can given them."

Mr. John Hickman of Pennsylvania, having no doubt as to the power
of Congress to pass the bill, supported it as a governmental
necessity.

MR. FESSENDEN OPPOSES LEGAL-TENDER.

The debate in the House was able and spirited throughout. Judging
by the tone and number of the Republicans who spoke against the
bill, a serious party division seemed to be impending. The measure
came to a vote on the 6th of February, the interest in the discussion
continuing to the last. Mr. Owen Lovejoy sought occasion to give
the measure a parting malediction, declared that "there is no
precipice, no chasm, no yawning bottomless gulf before this nation,
so terrible, so appalling, so ruinous, as the bill before the
House," and Mr. Roscoe Conkling so