to business which came from the
circulation of legal-tender notes, the political struggle might
have been hopeless. But as trade revived under the stimulus of an
expanding circulation, as the market for every species of product
was constantly enlarging and prices were steadily rising, the
support of the war policy became a far more cheerful duty to the
mass of our people.

This condition of affairs doubtless carried with it many elements
of demoralization, but the engagement of the people in schemes of
money-making proved a great support to the war policy of the
government. We saw the reproduction among us of the same causes
and the same effects which prevailed in England during her prolonged
contest with Napoleon. Money was superabundant, speculation was
rife, the government was a lavish buyer, a prodigal consumer.
Every man who could work was employed at high wages; every man who
had commodities to sell was sure of high prices. The whole community
came to regard the prevalent prosperity as the outgrowth of the
war. The ranks of the army could be filled by paying extravagant
bounty after the ardor of volunteering was past, and the hardship
of the struggle was thus in large measure concealed if not abated.
Considerate men knew that a day of reckoning would come, but they
believed it would be postponed until after the war was ended and
the Union victorious.

The policy of the legal-tender measure cannot therefore be properly
determined if we exclude from view that which may well be termed
its political and moral influence upon the mass of our people. It
was this which subsequently gave to that form of currency a strong
hold upon the minds of many who fancied that its stimulating effect
upon business and trade could be reproduced under utterly different
circumstances. Argument and experience have demonstrated the
fallacy of this conception, and averted the evils which might have
flowed from it. But in the judgment of a large and intelligent
majority of those who were contemporary with the war and gave
careful study to its progress, the legal-tender bill was a most
effective and powerful auxiliary in its successful prosecution.

THE INTERNAL-REVENUE SYSTEM.

Grateful as was the relief to the people from legal-tender notes,
it was apparent to Congress that a government cannot, any more than
an individual, maintain a state of solvency by the continuous
issuing o