notes for any other purpose.

"This measure contemplates:

"1. An exclusive national currency.

"2. Relief of the state banks from taxation upon circulation which
they cannot get in.

"3. The assumption of the duty of redemption by the national
treasury with means provided by the state banks.

"4. Reduction in the amount in circulation while the payments into
the treasury are being made and opportunity of some provision for
redemption which will not again increase it.

"The effect will be:

"1. Healthful condition of currency and consequent activity in
production and increase of resources.

"2. Gradual restoration of national notes to equality with specie
and the facilitating of resumption of specie payments.

"3. Improvement of national credit.

"4. Diminution of national expenditures and possible arrest of
the increase of national debt.

"Half measures are better than no measures; but thorough measures
are best.

"I will only add, that while I have never favored legal tender laws
in principle, and never consented to them except under imperious
necessity, I yet think it unwise to prohibit the making of any of
the treasury notes authorized by the bill now before Congress legal
tenders. The compound interest legal tender notes have then
fulfilled all my expectations for their issue and use; and may be
made most useful helps in gradual reduction of the volume of
circulation by substituting them for legal tenders bearing no
interest.

"I cannot elaborate this now. You will see how the thing will work
without any suggestion of mine. Faithfully your friend,

"S. P. Chase.
"Hon. John Sherman."

From my long and intimate acquaintance with Chief Justice Chase I
am quite sure that the duties of the great office he then held were
not agreeable to him. His life had been a political one, and this
gave him opportunity for travel and direct communion with the
people. The seclusion and severe labor imposed upon the Supreme
Court were contrary to his habits and injurious to his health. It
took him some years to become accustomed to the quiet of judicial
life. He presided over the Senate while acting as a court of
impeachment during the trial of Andrew Johnson in 1868. While
strongly opposed to the impeachment, he manifested no sign of
partiality. He died in New York city on the 7th of May, 1873, at
the age of sixty-five.

While Congress was in session, the Republican national convention
met