might rest as to the nature of the United States
note; but it is proper that I state the law under which it was
issued and the subsequent laws relating to it.

"The act of February 25, 1862, gave birth to this note as well as
the whole financial policy of the war. The first section of that
act authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to issue, upon the
credit of the United States, United States notes to the amount of
$150,000,000, payable to bearer at the treasury of the United
States. The amount of these notes was subsequently increased during
the war to the maximum sum of $450,000,000, but the nature and
character of the notes was the same as the first ones. The
enlargement of the issue did not in the least affect the obligation
of the United States to pay them in coin. This obligation was
recognized in every loan law passed during the war; and to secure
the note from depreciation the amount was carefully limited, and
every quality was given to it to maintain its value that was possible
during the exigencies of the war. I might show you, from the
contemporaneous debates in Congress, that at every step of the war
the notes were regarded as a temporary loan, in the nature of a
forced loan, but a loan cheerfully borne, and to be redeemed soon
after the war was over.

"It was not until two years after the war, when the advancing value
of the note created an interest to depreciate it in order to advance
prices for the purpose of speculation, that there was any talk
about putting off the payment of the note. The policy of a gradual
contraction of the currency with a view to specie payments was, in
December, 1865, concurred in by the almost unanimous vote of the
House of Representatives, and the act of April 12, 1866, authorized
$4,000,000 of notes a month to be retired and canceled. No one
then questioned either the policy, the duty, or the obligation of
the United States to redeem these notes in coin.

"Why has not this obligation been performed? How comes it that
fourteen years after these notes were issued, and eleven years
after the exigency was over, we are debating whether they shall be
paid, and when they shall be paid? We may well pause to examine
how this plain and positive obligation has so long been deferred
by a nation always sensitive to the public honor.

"The fatal commencement of this long delay was in this provision
of the act, approved March 3, 1863, as follows:

'And the holders of United