of the party on specie and fall into line with the Greenback men, shows how strong such leaders think the new force is. They are sharp bidders for the new party's support. But it need be no surprise if we soon see the Republicans contending in the same race, and accepting a large portion of the platform of the rising power. Their waste of former chances, the mournful folly with which they slatterned away the noblest opportunity the age has given to mould a nation righteously for years to come, forbids us to be surprised at any mulish or short-sighted mistake. But, should they be wise in time, the participation by both the great parties in the movement to remodel finance might possibly delay the formation of any new party, and lift Grant a third time into the presidency.

As matters stand to-day, with no keen interest in any question except finance, the South has the choice of the next President. Conciliating the West by her concurrence on finance, she holds all the cards. Unless a radical change is wrought in the coming year, a Western Democrat on a soft-money platform will be the next President, and some Southern Confederate leader, civil or military, will be Vice-President. Such do we consider the strength of this new financial issue if left unchallenged.

Misrepresented and vilified by the Eastern press in a style that betrayed its lack of argument and its insincerity, the greenback issue has rapidly gained strength by force of its truth and necessity. The convention at Toledo, and the several State conventions, have been larger and made of men as respectable in character and intellect as those who launched the Free-Soil party at Buffalo and elsewhere. There are a score of causes that contribute to the present distress; and there are double the number of theories which claim to be remedies for these evils: but there is a substantial agreement among the millions who call themselves Greenbackers. They claim that the Government shall issue all the bill or note currency; that it shall be made of paper; be legal tender for all debts, public and private, and, at present, most of them claim that it shall be convertible into a Government bond bearing a low rate of interest.

Whether that interest shall be paid in gold or not, and whether the amount of currency shall be regulated automatically, or by some direct act of the Government; whether a lower rate

of interest shall be secured by direct loans from the State, or may possibly come from more abundant money-there is a wide difference of opinion.

The new party is a unit in denying both the justice and the policy of resumption. Resumption changes, by statute, the relations between creditor and debtor. In the stress of war, when self-preservation is the highest law, Government may make any change in those relations, as it rightfully did when it first issued greenbacks. But, in profound peace, what right has Government, in deference to the theories of any clique, to enact a law for the sole and specific purpose of making every debt a heavier burden, and leaving the creditor richer than he was before?

The Greenbackers guide their feet by the light of experience. The ruin which Ricardo regretted to have brought on his country is warning enough for them against another such crime. They accept the verdict of English statesmen as Greville records it, familiar and intimate as he was with all of them ("Journals of George IV. and William IV.," vol. ii., p. 145):

"If we look back through the long course of Peel's life, and inquire what have been the great political measures with which his name is particularly connected, we shall find, first, the return to cash payments, which almost everybody now agrees was a FATAL MISTAKE, though it would not be fair to visit him with extraordinary censure for a measure which was sanctioned by almost all the great financial authorities."

In the great debate of 1830 the resumption act of 1819 was mercilessly attacked. Mr. Western, one of the Tory leaders, styled it "one of the most mischievous measures that was ever devised for the destruction of a nation." Peel stood alone amid the storm. Mr. R. B. Pullan, of Cincinnati, has aptly cited the piteous appeal he made to the forbearance of his ruined country

men:

"He expressed his willingness to abandon the opinions to which he was supposed to be unalterably pledged, if benefit would result. But he was convinced, if any error had been committed in establishing the system, we should only be exposed to still greater evils than those we had suffered by again doing anything to unsettle the currency of the country."

The Greenback party demands that Government shall issue all the note-currency. The power over the currency is too great a one to be trusted to private corporations. In the memorable debate of the Commons, 1819, Ricardo said bank-directors regulate currency and so fix prices, "a most formidable power; and Calhoun (October 3, 1837) says, "This power puts our destinies in their hands." Again (September 19, 1839), he warns us of this peril. Jefferson writes to Eppes (June 24, 1813), "Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulation restored to the nation, to whom it belongs."

The Greenback party has come to the conclusion that there is no need to tie the currency to specie. Paper answers every purpose. The plan and notion of a specie basis, at any rate in this country, has always been a sham. Mr. Sears, of New Jersey, well styled it "bankruptcy organized." A New York bank president, the late John Earl Williams, said the attempts of banks of issue and deposit to keep to specie "always have been, and, in the nature of things, always must be, a failure." It is only a device to enslave the money-market to what Chatham called "the cannibals of 'Change Alley." Nearly a hundred years ago, Franklin declared that, where two nations had the same basis for currency, the debtor nation would be the slave of its creditor-a statement of which Boutwell felt the truth when, on his proposing to bring home from London twenty or thirty millions of gold belonging to the United States, the Bank of England prevented it by threatening, if he did so, that they would cripple every bank in New York. Mr. H. C. Carey has saved for us an instructive anecdote:

"In 1838, Mr. Albert Gallatin, then President of the North American Bank, of New York, at a convention of bank presidents, said pleasantly, but yet most truly, 'We all know that, while a banknote bears upon its face a promise to pay the amount of its denomination in coin, it carries with it the implied condition that it be not asked for.""

To the lady who told her chair-maker that all his new chairs broke down, he answered, in the exact tone of a specie-basis advocate, "Why, madam, I think your friends must have actually sat in them!"

Sir John Lubbock found that only fifty cents of coin were

used in a hundred dollars' worth of business. Prof. Jevons says the whole fabric of England's vast commerce rests on the improbability that her merchants will ever want, at one time, onetwentieth part of the gold they have a right to demand. He also states that, before checks were used in the London clearinghouse, fifteen million dollars of debt were settled by the use of one million dollars of bank-bills and one hundred dollars of coin!

England and France-the two nations to which gold naturally and almost inevitably runs, since they are creditor states-have been obliged to resort to paper currency upon every emergency. The specie Bank of England, since she was remodeled in 1844, has thrice been obliged to beg the Government to save her from suspension. If England, the richest nation in the world, the reservoir and refuge of coin, cannot, without subterfuge, support one specie-paying bank in London, the world's business centre, how can we expect to hoard gold enough to form a real basis for two thousand banks scattered over a continent? Franklin ("Works," vol. iv., p. 82) says:

"Paper-money, well founded, has great advantages over gold and silver, being more light and convenient for handling large sums, and not likely to have its volume reduced by demands for exportation. No method has hitherto been formed to establish a medium of trade equal in all its advantages to bills of credit made a general legal tender.”

Even Ricardo, the high-priest of the bullionists, the father of the present British system, says:

"A regulated paper currency is so great an improvement in commerce that I should greatly regret if prejudice should induce us to return to a system of less utility. The introduction of the precious metals for the purposes of money may with truth be considered as one of the most important steps toward the improvement of commerce and the arts of civilized life. But it is no less true that, with the advancement of knowledge and science, we discover that it would be another improvement to banish them again from the employment to which, during the less enlightened period, they had been so advantageously applied" ("Works," by McCulloch, p. 404).

"It is not necessary that paper-money should be payable in specie to secure its value; only that its quantity should be regu

lated according to the value of the metal which is declared to be the standard" (Ricardo's "Plan for Extinction of Bank-Notes ").

It seems conceivable that this "regulation" might be secured by making the paper exchangeable for a bond.

Calhoun's opinions on paper currency do not exactly coincide with those of the new party, but they cover almost every principle we assert. February 5, 1840, he said: "The present currency is incurably bad. It is impossible to give it solidity or stability." Again (September 19, 1839), he said:

"A paper currency, in some form, if not necessary, is almost indispensable in the financial and commercial operations of civilized and extensive communities. In many respects it has a vast superiority over a metallic currency, especially in great and extended transactions, by its greater cheapness, lightness, and the facility of determining the amount. . . . No convertible paper is suitable for currency ;" and March 22, 1838, he affirms the right of Congress to make and use paper-money.

...

The Greenback party maintains that gold is no trustworthy standard of value. During the rebellion, gold-measured by the prices of twenty of our great staples-varied more than any one of them did, except cotton, the cause of the war. Jevons, after measuring gold by the prices of more than a hundred other articles, says that from 1789 to 1809 gold fell 46 per cent.; and from 1809 to 1849 gold rose 145 per cent., "rendering Government annuities and all fixed payments, extending over this period, almost two and one-half times as valuable as they were in 1809." From 1849 to 1875 gold has fallen, Jevons says, at least 20 per cent. Henry Fawcett (Manual) thinks gold has fallen, during the last twenty-five years, 25 per cent. Prof. Jevons further states that, between 1822 and 1825, gold fell 17 per cent.; and between 1852 and 1857 gold fell 31 per cent.

Now, while gold has thus varied during the last ninety years, there is in England one commodity which never changes; that is consols and shares in the Bank of England; which practically are public funds, since they are in effect guaranteed by the nation. From 1789 to 1875, both inclusive, the average price of a consol was £81. If, as Jevons says, from 1809 to 1849 gold more than doubled in value, the consol never changed; its average price,