overthrow of the Government would have been
effected. Never did any minister of finance undertake a task apparently
so hopeless as that so fully accomplished by Mr. Chase in reviving the
public credit. A single fact will illustrate the extraordinary result.
At the close of the fiscal year ending 1st July, 1860, our public debt
was only $64,769,703, and Secretary Cobb was borrowing money at twelve
per cent. per annum. On the first of July 1863, in the midst of a
stupendous rebellion, our debt was $1,097,274,000, and Mr. Chase had
reduced the average rate of interest to 3.89 per cent. per annum, whilst
the highest rate was 7.30 for a comparatively small sum to be paid off
next year. This is a financial achievement without a parallel in the
history of the world. If I speak on this subject with some enthusiasm,
it is in no egotistical spirit, for Mr. Chase's system differs in many
respects widely from that adopted by me as Minister of Finance during
the Mexican war, and which raised United States _five per cents._ to a
premium. But my system was based on specie, or its real and convertible
equivalent, and would not have answered the present emergency, which, by
our enormous expenditure, necessarily forced a partial and temporary
suspension of specie payments upon our banks and Government. Mr. Chase's
system is exclusively his own, and, in many of its aspects, is without a
precedent in history. When first proposed by him it had very few
friends, and was forced upon a reluctant Congress by the great
emergency, presenting the alternative of its adoption or financial ruin.
Indeed, upon a test vote in Congress in February last, it had failed,
when the premium on gold rose immediately over twenty per cent. This
caused a reconsideration, when the bills were passed and the premium on
gold was immediately reduced more than the previous rise, exhibiting the
extraordinary difference in a few days of twenty-three per cent., in the
absence of any intermediate Federal victories in the field.

Such are the facts. Let me now proceed to detail the causes of these
remarkable results. The first element in the success of any Minister of
Finance is the just confidence of the country in his ability, integrity,
candor, courage, and patriotism. He may find it necessary, in some great
emergency, like our rebellion, to diverge somewhat from the _via trita_
of the past, and enter upon paths not lighted by the lamp of experience.
He must never, however