its admirable success in furnishing the Government with the means to
carry on the war: it is the inauguration of sounder principles on
currency than have heretofore prevailed, which, if unfolded and carried
legitimately out, will give the country the best currency in the
world--perfectly secured, uniform in value at every point, and liable to
no disastrous expansions and contractions. The notion that any great
industrial, manufacturing, and commercial nation can conduct its
business--any more than it can carry on a great war--with a specie
currency alone, is indeed exploded; but the notion that a paper currency
to be safe must be based on specie, still prevails--although the
currency furnished by the thousands of banks scattered throughout the
country has never been really based upon the actual possession of specie
to the extent of more than _one fifth_ of the amount in circulation. It
may be the doctrine will never come to prevail that a specie basis in
whole or in part is no more indispensable to a sound and safe paper
currency than an exclusive specie currency is possible or desirable in a
country like this. It may be that the people will never come to believe
that a legal-tender paper currency, issued exclusively by the National
Government--based upon the credit of the nation, constituting a lien
upon all the property of the country, and proportioned in amount of
issue to the needs of the people for it as an instrument of
exchange--would, for all home uses, possess in full perfection the
nature, functions, and powers of money. It is a subject we do not
propose to discuss. It is enough now to say that the notes of the United
States, fundable in national six per cent. bonds, and drawing interest
as they do semi-annually in gold, must be admitted by everybody to be as
safe a currency as the banks as a whole have ever supplied, and to
possess other advantages which make them incomparably a better currency
than that of local banks.