prefer a currency which, when yon send it to
their banks for redemption, is not redeemed,
because they tell you that they have in their
vaults only the actual amount of specie re-
quired by law, and if they redeem the notes
you present, it will reduce their specie below
the amount they are required to keep con-
stantly on hand? Such a system of cur-
rency has ruined more merchants than any
other cause in the land. It has caused every
twenty years a stringency in the money
market before which merchants have gone
down as soldiers have gone down before
cannon, You have bogus banks starting
up everywhere, mere shaving shops; who
borrow their capital to-day, issue their notes
to-morrow, and pay back on the next day
the capital they have borrowed, leaving their
notes utterly worthless. Yet gentlemen are
to-day groaning over a depreciated currency.
Do you wonder that gold goes up to 270
under a system which has led Maryland to
pass a law to allow her banks not to redeem
their notes in anything? It was not until
two months past that the banks of Baltimore
city paid their exchanges between the different
banks in United States currency, and then
only because the First National Bank told
them that if they did not do so it would
throw out their notes, and banks with a cap-
ital of $1,500,000, within two days of that
exchange, kept within their vaults only
$20,000 in United States currency; now they
keep constantly on hand the sum of $250,000
in United States money. United States mo-
ney now occupies in our banks the position
which gold and silver occupied in former
times.
The only means by which this country can
be saved from bankruptcy is to make the na-
tional currency the currency of the country.
Your only hope is to make the government
money, for which everything that every man
in the whole length and breadth of the land
owns is pledged; which is just as good as all
the real estate and all the personal property
in the country can make it—your only hope
is to make that take the place of gold and
silver in your exchanges. And to do that is
to stop this flooding of every State with
State banks. The State of Maryland has now
a chance to go back over the ground which
she should never have trod, to where the con-
stitution of the United States puts it; that all
money shall be issued by the United States,
and everything that is to be made a tender in
payment of debts besides gold and silver must
be done by the laws of the United States.
This is sound doctrine, which if adopted in
time may possibly save the State of Maryland
millions of dollars; and which, if it had been
adopted years ago, would have saved millions
of dollars in the past.
Now, gentlemen are fond of talking about
there being a possibility of a repudiation of
United States money, repudiation of United |
States stocks upon which that money is
founded. Now, whenever that time shall
come, you will find a condition of things in
which the people will be willing to repudiate
that which they themselves own; a condition
of things in which every man is willing to
make himself to some degree a beggar; a
time in which the loyal people of this country
are willing to say—''we propose to divest"—
whom? England? No. The South? No.
But—"we propose to divest ourselves of
about $2,000,000,000 worth of our own prop-
erty." Now, I ask gentlemen if that condi-
tion of things is very likely ever to occur ?
Everything that any of you are worth; every-
thing that any man in Maryland is worth;
everything that any and all men in the length
and breadth of these United States are worth,
is pledged for that government money, that
government stock. And so long as we as a
people exist, so long as we as individuals
exist, that money and those stocks must be
good.
You will bear the chimera brought up of
the possibility of this country very quickly
returning to the basis of specie payments.
Sir, there are many men here who will never
live to see the day on which this country will
return to specie payments. And the only
hope of having a sound currency is to make
the United States currency take the place of
gold and silver. And the only hope of bring-
ing the country through the expenses of this
war for years to come, is to make a sound
currency. If gentlemen are under the delu-
sion that six months, or a year, is to end the
expenses of this war, they better get out of it
as soon as possible. They will have to spend
many hundreds of millions of dollars before
the expenses of this war are over. Should
the actual fighting soon cease, the expenses of
the war will not then be over. A large army
and a large navy will still have to be main-
tained. And I much question if, when this
civil war is closed, this country will not find
itself forced to plunge into a war abroad, and
thus be compelled to continue the expenditure
of men and treasure for years to come. And
our expenditures can only be maintained by a
sound national currency, and that sound na-
tional currency can only be secured by stop-
ping this flooding the country with the issues
of State banks. You find now in the city of
New York the State banks doing all in their
power to embarrass the operations of the Sec-
retary of the Treasury, They spend their
money in Congress to prevent their issues
from being taxed—caring more for their in-
dividual interests than for the good of the
country.
I hope the men of Maryland will have the
sound discretion and courage to come up and
meet this question fairly and squarely. Ad-
mitting that in the past they have been guided
by an unsound political economy, that they
have wandered away from the true spirit of |
