gold, a legal tender for import duties, and at the same time largely increase the duties, to cover the loss in the difference of value in gold and currency, and to largely reduce imports below trade exports. Whenever our nation's annual exports (exclusive of gold debt payments sent abroad) will not fully meet and pay all foregin demands, both for purchased imports, debt and interest annually due abroad, then we should increase duties to retrench and economize our nation's foreign extravagance in purchasing imports. Then our country could not be impoverished as now, either of its own employments or its own gold. When either of the real producers of our country's wealth, manufacturers, miners, or farmers, are impoverished by foreign competition, then all are made to suffer; because each one's productions add to the one total production of our country. There is only one quick way to possess an abundance of specie, and that is this way, which is a very old one-Do not spend so much specie with other nations for foreign productions. Manufacture and produce more for ourselves. This will give our people more specie and more employment and wealth. A high tariff alone will do this. The protectionists of foreign industries in Congress are easily known. They are always in favor of taxing heavily American productions three hundred per cent., and would tax tea and coffee, which our poor people must have and should not be taxed; because it will not increase our employments, as duties on foreign industries would do. Our American people cannot support all other nations' industries and our own besides, as low duties now cause us to do. A tariff law for American industries alone would dissolve this ruinous and unnatural division of our market, as was found necessary to do after the bankruptcies of 1837 and 1857, to our country's immediate relief from depression of business. ADDRESS TO THE NEW YORK PRESS CLUB, Mr. President and Gentlemen: It is now more than twenty years since I cut from a newspaper a statement, that made a deep impression on my mind. The writer in a few words proclaimed a fact of unmeasured importance to our country and the world. He said that "knowledge, economy, and labor are the shining virtues of civilized man." A man without knowledge is a helpless animal; and without science he is a straying wanderer. Science, my friends, presents to the world a revelation of laws, designed in infinite wisdom for the use and elevation. of mankind. They are laws that have, as the poet says, "connected in this, our world, our greatest virtue with our greatest bliss;" and have made "our own bright prospect to be blest, our strongest motive to assist the rest." Science, my friends, is the knowledge of laws actually demonstrated by the experience of mankind. The knowledge and application of science, when rightly and wisely understood and applied to all the useful and necessary purposes of life, will enable man to unlock the deep mysteries of creation, and draw from its silent depths, "all that is good for food, and pleasant to the eye, and calculated to make us wise. When we as a people become wise enough to make all laws in accord with scientific principles, they will then become so clear, plain and positive, that no man can long hold office and receive its emoluments, without a faithful performance of those duties required by the law. The true object of all good Government must be forever the promotion of human welfare. This will never be more grandly set forth and described than it now is in the preamble to the Constitution of these United States. There we find, that the true object intended by the framers of the Constitution was clearly and fully expressed. They declared that "We, the people of these United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain this Constitution for the people of these United States." They then and there declared that "the Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of these United States, or any department or officer thereof." This Constitution holds every officer bound by his oath of office to perform his every act, as intending to establish justice and promote the general welfare. Our Independent Party holds it to be a fact, that our Government is now, and ever has been bound by an act of justice to the American people to coin money and regulate the value thereof, and also "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States." It was made the duty of Congress to receive in payment for all taxes, duties and debts, all the various forms of paper money, that have been issued for what was used and consumed in the prosecution of the war. The American people are coming to know, that every dollar, paid out by the Government in legal money for value received, has thereby become the people's money as effectually as it would be, if every dollar had been paid them in gold. For a Government to withdraw from the trade of a country such a currency, which the people had paid for and owned as honestly as they owned their land or the clothes on their backs. It had become by its use the country's cur rency, that was giving its benefits without costing the people or the Government anything but the printing and the paper on which it was made. This much abused paper money had actually purchased and paid for all the labor and ma: terials, that were consumed in our struggle for the nation's life. Such a currency should have been regarded by Congress, at the close of the war, as a treasure of more value than all the gold mines, that have ever been discovered in our country. It was a currency, that had not only saved the nation's life, but it had demonstrated a principle of incalculable value to our country and the world. It had proved, that Solon was right in saying, that a currency should be that, which is most valuable to the State, and of no value for any other purpose, exactly like our greenbacks. Our currency had demonstrated the fact, that paper money with the stamp of the Government upon it, promising to receive it in payment for all forms of taxes, duties and debts, and interconvertible with the bond of the Government at a low, but equitable rate of interest, would be the most convenient currency, that the world had ever seen. Such a currency should have been limited to the amount of the people's money actually found in circulation at the close of the war, as that was the price of the Nation's life. That amount of legal money, having been wrongfully taken from the people by allowing war taxes to continue, after the war had come to an end, should now be reissued and used in the purchase and the extinguishment of all the bonds, now due and held by the Government as a security for the money issued by the National Banks. All banking would then be done with a National money, representing the whole property of the American people. The amount of paper money, so found in circulation as a currency at the close of the war, should never be increased or diminished, only as per capita with the increase of the inhabitants of the country. One National money would diminish the chance of loss. by counterfeit money in the proportion as one would bear to the whole number of National Banks. Instead, the National Banks present more than 2,000 sets of pictures to become acquainted with, we should then have but one National money, that all would soon learn to know at sight, and that such a currency would become an ever-strengthening bond of National union. Such a currency, made as secure as the embodied wealth and power of a nation can make it, would give a stability and security to the operations of trade and commerce; and would more effectually secure the reward of labor to those, who earn it than any other form of currency ever before introduced. The Constitution has declared that "the Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to provide for the common defense and the general welfare of these United States." The power of Congress is ample to restore to the people their money, that had been wrongfully taken from them by war taxes; and then, this same money has been converted into a national debt. More than one thousand four hundred millions of dollars has been wrung from the toiling masses to pay the interest on a currency, that had belonged to the people-a currency President Grant declared was the best currency, that the country had ever possessed; and that there was no more in circulation than was needed for the darkest period of the year. The present Secretary of the Treasury has said, that the people's currency had been so long used "that every citizen of the United States had conformed his business to the legal tender clause, of the law regulating the currency of the country." This same Secretary declared, that the man, who would refuse to receive the same kind of money, that he had paid out, would be a repudiator and extortioner. He also declared when a Senator, that to take from the people such a currency "would be an act of folly without an example in ancient and modern times." |