nate of the State of New York, showing
the need of especial care in such dealings with financial necessities.

In 1876, during the "greenback craze," General Garfield and Mr. S. B.
Crittenden, both members of the House of Representatives at that time,
asked me to read a paper on the same general subject before an audience
of Senators and Representatives of both parties in Washington. This I
did, and also gave it later before an assemblage of men of business at
the Union League Club in New York.

Various editions of the paper were afterward published, among them, two
or three for campaign purposes, in the hope that they might be of use
in showing to what folly, cruelty, wrong and rain the passion for "fiat
money" may lead.

Other editions were issued at a later period, in view of the principle
involved in the proposed unlimited coinage of silver in the United
States, which was, at bottom, the idea which led to that fearful wreck
of public and private prosperity in France.

For these editions there was an added reason in the fact that the
utterances of sundry politicians at that time pointed clearly to issues
of paper money practically unlimited. These men were logical enough
to see that it would be inconsistent to stop at the unlimited issue
of silver dollars which cost really something when they could issue
unlimited paper dollars which virtually cost nothing.

In thus exhibiting facts which Bishop Butler would have recognized as
confirming his theory of "The Possible Insanity of States," it is but
just to acknowledge that the French proposal was vastly more sane than
that made in our own country. Those French issues of paper rested not
merely "on the will of a free people," but on one-third of the entire
landed property of France; on the very choicest of real property in city
and country--the confiscated estates of the Church and of the fugitive
aristocracy--and on the power to use the paper thus issued in purchasing
this real property at very low prices.

I have taken all pains to be exact, revising the whole paper in the
light of the most recent publications and giving my authority for every
important statement, and now leave the whole matter with my readers.

At the request of a Canadian friend, who has expressed a strong wish
that this work be brought down to date, I have again restudied the
subject in the light of various works which have appeared since
my earlier research,--especially Levasseur's "Histoire