ould measure all obligations, and a repeal of the act would now
reopen all the wild and dangerous speculation schemes that feed
and fatter upon depreciated paper money. The influence that secures
this repeal will not stop here. If we can recall our promise to
pay our notes outstanding why should we not issue more? If we can
disregard our promise to pay them, why shall we regard our promise
not to issue more than $400,000,000, as stipulated for by the act
of 1864? If we can reopen the question of the payment of our notes,
why may we not reopen the question as to the payment of our bonds?
Is the act of 1869 any more sacred than the act of 1875? And if
we can reopen these questions, why not reopen the laws requiring
the payment of either interest or principal of the public debt?
They rest upon acts of Congress which we have the power to repeal.
If the public honor cannot protect our promise to the note holder,
how shall it protect our promise to the bondholder? Already do we
see advocated in high places, by numerous and formidable organizations,
all forms of repudiation, which, if adopted, would reduce our nation
to the credit of a robber chief--worse than the credit of an Algerine
pirate, who at least would not plunder his own countrymen. And if
the public creditor had no safety, what chance would the national
banks--creations of our own and subject to our will--have in
Congress? It has already been proposed to confiscate their bonds,
premium and all, as a mode of paying their notes with greenbacks.
What expedient so easy if we would make money cheap and abundant?
Or, if so extreme a measure could be arrested, what is to prevent
the permanent dethronement of gold as a measure of value, and the
substitution of an interconvertible currency bond, bearing three
and sixty-five hundredths per cent. interest, as a standard of
value; and when it become too expensive to print the notes to pay
the interest, reduce the rate. Why not? Why pay three and sixty-
five hundredths per cent., when it is easier to print three? It is
but an act of Congress. And when the process of repudiation goes
so far that your notes will not buy bread, why then declare against
all interest, and then, after passing through the valley of
humiliation, return again to barter, and honor, and gold again.

"Sir, if you once commence this downward course of repudiation then
there is but one ending. You may, like Mirabeau and the Girondists,
seek to