bill made
by me from the committee on finance, December 7, 1867.

"If my letter is taken in connection with the speech which it
inclosed and to which it expressly referred, it will be perceived
that my position there is entirely consistent with what it is now,
and time has proven that, if the report of the committee on finance
had been adopted, we would long since have reached the coin standard,
with an enormous saving of interest, and without impairing the
public credit. My position was, that while the legal tender act
made United States notes a legal tender for all debts, private and
public, except for customs duties and interest of the public debt,
yet we could not honestly compel the public creditors to receive
United States notes in the payment of bonds until we made good the
pledge of the public faith to pay the notes in coin. That promise
was printed on the face of the notes when issued, was repeated in
several acts of Congress, and was declared valid and obligatory by
the Supreme Court.

"From the first issue of the legal tender note, which I heartily
supported and voted for, I have sought to make it good, to support,
maintain and advance its value. It was in the earnest effort to
restore to the greenback the right to be converted, on the demand
of the holder, into a five per cent. bond and, as soon as practicable,
into coin, that I made the speech referred to, resisting alike the
demand of those who wished to exclude United States notes from the
operation of funding and the large class of persons who wished to
cheapen, degrade and ultimately repudiate them. In all my official
connection with legislation as to legal tender notes, I have but
one act to regret and to apologize for, and that is my acquiescence
in the act of March 3, 1863, which, under the pressure of war and
to promote the sale of bonds, took away from the holders of these
notes the right to convert them into interest-bearing securities.
This right might properly have been suspended during the war, but
its repeal was a fatal act, the source and cause of all the financial
evils we have suffered and from which we cannot recover until we
restore that right or redeem on demand our notes in coin.

"The speech referred to, and which I have recently read by reasons
of the reference to it in the letter to Dr. Mann, will clearly show
that I have not been guilty of inconsistency or a change of opinion
--the most pardonable of all offenses--but then i