material detriment to the debtor class or to the country at large, must
be provided for. To protect the national honor, every dollar of
Government indebtedness should be paid in gold, unless otherwise
expressly stipulated in the contract. Let it be understood that no
repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in public
place, and it will go far toward strengthening a credit which ought to
be the best in the world, and will ultimately enable us to replace the
debt with bonds bearing less interest than we now pay. To this should
be added a faithful collection of the revenue, a strict accountability
to the Treasury for every dollar collected, and the greatest
practicable retrenchment in expenditure in every department of
Government.

When we compare the paying capacity of the country now, with the ten
States in poverty from the effects of war, but soon to emerge, I trust,
into greater prosperity than ever before, with its paying capacity
twenty-five years ago, and calculate what it probably will be
twenty-five years hence, who can doubt the feasibility of paying every
dollar then with more ease than we now pay for useless luxuries? Why,
it looks as though Providence had bestowed upon us a strong box in the
precious metals locked up in the sterile mountains of the far West, and
which we are now forging the key to unlock, to meet the very
contingency that is now upon us.

Ultimately it may be necessary to insure the facilities to reach these
riches and it may be necessary also that the General Government should
give its aid to secure this access; but that should only be when a
dollar of obligation to pay secures precisely the same sort of dollar
to use now, and not before. Whilst the question of specie payments is
in abeyance the prudent business man is careful about contracting debts