get rid of the greenback except by paying gold? The only escape from
ultimate payment of gold is to declare that as a nation we permanently
and finally renounce all idea of ever attaining a specie standard--that
we launch ourselves on an ocean of paper money without shore or
sounding, with no rudder to guide us and no compass to steer by. And
this is precisely what is involved if we adopt this mischievous
suggestion of 'a new way to pay old debts.' Our fate in attempting such
a course may be easily read in the history of similar follies both in
Europe and in our own country. Prostration of credit, financial
disaster, widespread distress among all classes of the community, would
form the closing scenes in our career of gratuitous folly and national
dishonor. And from such an abyss of sorrow and humiliation, it would be
a painful and toilsome effort to regain as sound a position in our
finances as we are asked voluntarily to abandon to-day.

"The remedy for our financial troubles, Mr. Speaker, will not be found
in a superabundance of depreciated paper currency. It lies in the
opposite direction--and the sooner the nation finds itself on a specie
basis, the sooner will the public treasury be freed from embarrassment,
and private business relieved from discouragement. Instead, therefore,
of entering upon a reckless and boundless issue of legal tenders, with
their consequent depression if not destruction of value, let us set
resolutely to work and make those already in circulation equal to so
many gold dollars. When that result shall be accomplished, we can
proceed to pay our Five-twenties either in coin or paper, for the one
would be equivalent to the other. But to proceed deliberately on a
scheme of depreciating our legal tenders and then forcing the holders of
Government bonds to accept them in payment, would resemble in point of
honor, the policy of a merchant who, with abundant resources and
prosperous business, should devise a plan for throwing discredit on his
own notes with the view of having them bought up at a discount, ruinous
to the holders and immensely profitable to his own knavish pocket. This
comparison may faintly illustrate the wrongfulness of the policy, but
not its consummate folly--for in the case of the Government, unlike the
merchant, the stern necessity would recur of making good in the end, by
the payment of hard coin, all the discount that might be gained by the
temporary substitution of paper.

"