d inflated paper currency promotes
speculation and extravagance, and at the same time discourages
legitimate business, honest labor, and economy. It dries up the
true sources of individual and public prosperity. Over-trading and
fast living always go with it. It stimulates the desire to incur
debt; it causes high rates of interest; it increases importations
from abroad; it has no fixed value; it is liable to frequent and
great fluctuations, thereby rendering every pecuniary engagement
precarious and disturbing all existing contracts and expectations;
it is the parent of panics. Every period of inflation is followed
by a loss of confidence, a shrinkage of values, depression of
business, panics, lack of employment, and widespread disaster and
distress. The heaviest part of the calamity falls on those least
able to bear it. The wholesale dealer, the middle-man, and the
retailer always endeavor to cover the risks of the fickle standard
of value by raising their prices. But the men of small means and
the laborer are thrown out of employment, and want and suffering
are liable soon to follow.

When government enters upon the experiment of issuing irredeemable
paper money there can be no fixed limit to its volume. The amount
will depend on the interest of leading politicians, on their whims,
and on the excitement of the hour. It affords such facility for
contracting debt that extravagant and corrupt government
expenditure are the sure result. Under the name of public
improvements, the wildest enterprises, contrived for private gain,
are undertaken. Indefinite expansion becomes the rule, and in the
end bankruptcy, ruin, and repudiation.

During the last few years a great deal has been said about the
centralizing tendency of recent events in our history. The
increasing power of the government at Washington has been a
favorite theme for Democratic declamation. But where, since the
foundation of the government, has a proposition been seriously
entertained which would confer such monstrous and dangerous powers
on the general government as this inflation scheme of the Ohio
Democracy? During the war for the Union, solely on the ground of
necessity, the government issued the legal tender, or greenback
currency. But they accompanied it with a solemn pledge in