Mr. Fessenden then inquired, "What do we offer without the legal-
tender clause? We are offering notes, with the interest secured
beyond a question if the amendments proposed by the Committee on
Finance of the Senate are adopted, based on the national faith,
and with the power to deposit and receive five per cent. interest
in any sub-treasury, and the power of the government to sell the
stock at any price, to meet whatever it may be necessary to meet.
Will notes of this kind stand better when going out, if you put
the confession upon their face, that they are discarded by you,
and that you know they ought not to be received, and would not be,
unless their reception is compelled by legal enactment?"

The argument against this view, according to Mr. Fessenden, "is
simply that the banks will not take the notes unless they are made
a legal-tender, and therefore they will be discredited. It was
thus reduced to a contest between the government and the banks;
and the question is whether the banks have the will and the power
to discredit the notes of the United-States Treasury." With all
his objections to the legal-tender feature,--and they were very
grave,--Mr. Fessenden intimated his willingness to vote for it if
it were demonstrated to be a necessity. On the constitutional
question involved he did not touch. He preferred, he said, "to
have his own mind uninstructed" upon that aspect of the case.

In illustration of the doubt and diversity of opinion prevailing,
Mr. Fessenden stated that on a certain day he was advised very
strongly by a leading financial man that he must at all events
oppose the legal-tender clause, which he described as utterly
destructive. On the same day he received a note from another
friend, assuring him that the legal-tender bill was an absolute
necessity to the government and the people. The next day the first
gentleman telegraphed that he had changed his mind, and now thought
the legal-tender bill peremptorily demanded by public exigency.
On the ensuing day the second gentleman wrote that he had changed
his mind, and now saw clearly that the legal-tender bill would ruin
the country. There can be no harm in stating that the authors of
these grotesque contradictions were Mr. James Gallatin and Mr. Morris
Ketchum of New York.

MR. COLLAMER AND MR. SHERMAN.

Mr. Collamer of Vermont followed Mr. Fessenden in an exhaustive
argument against the b