been laboring to agree upon a plan for specie
payments. After his frequent speeches to us about secret conclaves,
about shams and deceptions, and such like polite and friendly
comments upon the work of the Republican party, I might greet my
colleague with such happy phrases about _his_ caucus; but I will
not, but, on the contrary, I commend his labors, and sincerely hope
that he and his political friends may agree upon some plan to reach
a specie standard, and not one to avoid to, to prevent it, to defer
it. Under color of intending to prepare for it, I hope they will
not make their measure the pretext for repealing the law as it
stands, which fixes a day for resumption and will secure the end
we both aim at.

"I frankly state for the Republican party that, while we could
agree to fixing the time for specie payments and upon conferring
the ample and sufficient powers upon the Secretary of the Treasury
contained in the law, we could not agree in prescribing the precise
mode in which the process should be executed. Nor, in my opinion,
was it at all essential that we should. Much must be left to the
discretion of the officer charged with the execution of such a law.
The powers conferred, as I shall show hereafter, are ample; and
the discretion given will be executed under the eye of Congress.

"And, sir, there is a strong force in the fact that in every example
we have of the successful resumption of specie payments, in this
and other countries, a fixed day has been named by legislative
authority, and the details and power of execution have been left
to executive authority. Thus, in Great Britain, the act of parliament
of July 2, 1819, fixed the time for full resumption at the 1st day
of May, 1823, and for a graduated resumption in gold at intermediate
dates; and for fractional sums under forty shillings to be paid in
silver coin; and the governor and directors of the Bank of England
were charged with its execution, and authorized at their discretion
to resume payment in full on the 1st day of May, 1822. France is
now successfully passing through the same process of resumption,
the time being fixed (two years ago) for January 1, 1878, and now
practically attained.

"In our own country many of the states have presented similar laws
in case of suspended bank payments, and in some cases the suspended
banks have, by associated action, fixed a time for general resumption,
and each bank adopted its own expedient for i