The Governor's suggestions for a prompt resumption of specie payments seem as simple now as the discovery of America would appear to one of our accomplished transatlantic skippers, but when promulgated they provoked as much mistrust and flippant criticism as the plan of Columbus for finding a western path to the Indies encountered from the Spanish courtiers, and from much the same class of minds.
" After eleven years of convulsion without a restoration of specie payments, it now claims a restoration of specie payments without a convulsion. The problem does not seem difficult. Resumption by the government will accomplish completely resumption by the banks. The treasury has only, by gradual and prudent measures, to provide for the payment of such portion of the outstanding treasury notes as the public, not wishing to retain for use, will return upon it for redemption. The sum required in coin, if the preparations be wisely conducted so as to secure public confidence, will be what is necessary to replace the fractional currency and to supply such individuals as prefer coin to paper for their little stores of money, and also what is necessary to constitute a central reservoir of reserves against the fluctuations of international balances and for the banks. To amass a sufficient quantity by intercepting from the current of precious metals flowing out of this country, and by acquiring from the stocks which exist abroad without disturbing the equilibrium of foreign moneymarkets, is a result to l>e worked out by a study of all the conditions, and the elements to fulfil those conditions, and by the execution of the plan adopted, with practical skill and judgment. Redemption, beyond this provision of coin, can be effected as other business payments are effected; or in any method which converts investments without interest to investments upon interest, on terms the holder will accept; and by such measures as would keep the aggregate amount of the currency self-adjusting during all the process, without creating, at any time, an artificial scarcity, and without exciting the public imagination with alarm which impairs confidence, contracts the whole large machinery of credit, and disturbs the natural operations of business. The best resource for redemption is that furnished by public economies ; for it creates no new charge upon the people ; and a stronger public credit is certain to result from sounder finance, and will reduce the annual cost of the national debt.
" These opinions, deduced from reason, are confirmed, in a recent example, by experience. France, in her ten months' contest with Germany, incurred a war expenditure of one thousand million of dollars in specie values; and, in the twenty-eight months following the peace, paid an indemnity of one thousand million of dollars in specie, or its equivalent, to a foreign country. These great operations were carried on without causing a depreciation of the currency beyond two and one-half per cent. at its extreme point, and without disturbing the general business or industry of the people."
But the Governor was not content with providing remedies for the evils from which the people were suffering in their business and industries merely. " They must be broader and deeper," he said.1
" What is more needed now is, that the public mind be reassured by a wise, safe, and healing policy. The dread of imaginary evils ascribed to the methods assumed to be necessary to restore specie payments is more mischievous than the reality, wisely pursued, ought to be. As soon as the apprehension of an impending fall of values is removed, manufacturing and mechanical industries will start anew; dealers will buy for future consumption; enterprises that commend themselves to the sober judgment of investors will be undertaken; and capital, which now accepts any low rate of interest where there is no risk, but is withheld from operations of average character, will be lent on reasonable conditions.
1" Writings and Speeches," Vol. II. p. 2U2.
" But the remedies for the evils now felt by the people in their business and industries must extend beyond any measures merely relating to the currency. They must be broader and deeper. They must begin with a prompt and large reduction in governmental expenditures and taxation, which shall leave in the hands that earn it a larger share of the result of labor. They must proceed by withdrawing, as much as possible, governmental interferences that cripple the industries of the people. They must be consummated with an increased efficiency and economy in the conduct of business and in the processes of production, and by a more rigorous frugality in private consumption. A period of self-denial will replace what has been wasted.
" We must build up a new prosperity upon the old foundations of American self-government; carry back our political systems toward the ideals of their authors; make governmental institutions simple, frugal, — meddling little with the private concerns of individuals, aiming at fraternity among ourselves and peace abroad, and trusting to the people to work out their own prosperity and happiness. All the elements of national growth and private felicity exist in our country in an abundance which Providence has vouchsafed to no other people. "What we need to do is to rescue them from governmental folly and rapacity."
Again he says:
"When governments take from the people for official expenditure nearly all the surplus earnings of individuals, science and skill in the art of taxation become necessary,— necessary to preserve and enlarge the revenue, necessary to gild the infliction to the taxpayers. Our present situation is that we have more than European burdens, as seen in the most costly governments of the richest of modern nations supporting immense navies and armies and public debts; and to these burdens we have conjoined an ignorance and incompetency in dealing with them, which is peculiarly our own. We have not yet acquired the arts
belonging to a system which the founders of American government warned us against, and fondly believed would never exist in this country.
" The consequence is that the pecuniary sacrifices of the people are not to be measured by the receipts into the treasury. They are vastly greater. A tax that starts in its career by disturbing the natural courses of private industry and impairing the productive power of labor, and then comes to the consumer, distended by profits of successive intermediaries, and by insurance against the risks of a fickle or uncertain governmental policy and of a fluctuating governmental standard of value, — blights human well-being at every step. When it reaches the hapless child of toil, who buys his bread by the single loaf .and his fuel by the basket, it devours his earnings and inflicts starvation.
" Another evil of such a system of excessive taxation is, that it creates and nourishes a governmental class, with tendencies to lessen services and to enlarge compensation, to multiply retainers, to invent jobs, and foster all forms of expenditure, — tendencies unrestrained by the watchful eye and firm hand of personal interest, which alone enable private business to be carried on successfully. In other countries such a class has found itself able, sometimes by its own influence and sometimes in alliance with the army, to rule the unorganized masses.
" In our country it has become a great power, acting on the elections by all the methods of organization, of propagating opinion, of influence, and of corruption. The system, like every living thing, struggles to perpetuate its own existence.
" Every useful and necessary governmental service, at a proper cost, is productive labor. Every excess beyond that, so far as it is saved by the oflk'ial, merely transfers to him what belongs to the people. So far as such excess is consumed, it is a waste of capital, as absolute as if wheat of equal value were destroyed by fire, or gold were sunk in the ocean.
" Probably such waste by governmental expenditure in the eleven years since the war amounts to, at least, as much as our present national debt."i
i "Writings and Speeches," Vol. II. p. 277.
^
The prominence which Tilden had already acquired as a candidate for the presidency gave a purely political tone to the legislation of this session. Each party was fighting for position. It was with anything but complacency that the presidential aspirants of his own party — among whom Hendricks, of Indiana; Thurman and Allen, of Ohio; Bayard, of Delaware; Hancock, of Pennsylvania; Parker, of New Jersey; and Church, of New York, were conspicuous — witnessed his growing favor with the country.i Their discontent was more or less disclosed at the Utica convention at which delegates were chosen to attend the national convention that was to nominate a president at St. Louis on the 26th of June. Relying upon the community of interest .and sympathy of the predatory class who had felt the weight of the Governor's heavy hand, they sought to prevent the expression at Utica of a preference for his nomination, so that the delegates might be left free and accessible to such influences as competing candidates might be willing and able to bring to bear upon them. It was unsuccessful, however. The earnest friends of the Governor in the convention were in an irresistible majority, his friends constituted a large majority of the delegation to St. Louis, and to guard against any treachery on the part of the disaffected delegates, the following resolution was adopted:
i As early as the 26th of May the following article, understood to be from the pen of the late William C. Bryant, appeared in the leading column of the " Evening Post," a Republican print, and reflects very correctly the impression left upon the minds of considerate and dispassionate parties by the conduct of those Democrats who were arrayed against Mr. Tilden:
" The Democratic schism that recently developed opposition to Governor Tilden in his own party in this State is curiously significant of certain things which are worthy of careful study, and especially worthy of consideration by honest and sincere Democrats outside of New York.
" There are two ' wings,' so to speak, in that party, and Governor Tilden represents one of them, while the persons who oppose him constitute the other. It is natural enough that the canal ring and its followers, Tammany and its adherents, and that sort of Democrats who are commonly called Bourbons, should labor to defeat the nomination for high office of the man who represents everything that they oppose, and opposes everything that they represent; but it will be a most discouraging thing to every person who hopes for good at the hands of the Democratic party, and every man in that party who sincerely seeks to make it the instrument of governmental purification and a return to sound principles and honest methods, if such opposition is permitted to prevail in its councils. Governor Tilden represents all that there is in the Democratic party which the people are at all disposed to trust; his opponents represent that which the people just now most earnestly dread, and the development of the opposition in these circumstances affords that party a precious opportunity to strengthen itself and win some of that popular confidence which it badly needs, by placing itself fairly upon the side of the right.
" It will not be easy to close the breach which exists in the Democratic party in this State, for the reason that it is never easy to reconcile an honest desire to do right with a set purpose to do wrong; and it will be difficult to arrange a compromise which shall not seem to be a mere bargain. Governor Tilden has fought manfully for hard money and honest government. It is impossible to mistake his attitude on these questions; and if at this juncture the party yields to the demands of the men in New York who oppose him, it can scarcely hope to escape the reputation of having rejected those principles and written hostility to them upon its banners, whatever clever devices it may hit upon for concealing the fact under formal declarations of doctrine. His name has been put forward too far to be withdrawn now without a practical declaration of hostility to the principles which his name has come to represent.
"The country is asking the question, 'Can we trust the Democratic party?' and it will take its answer, very probably, from the temper with which the party in other States shall deal with the schism here. The case is a very peculiar one. There are other Democrats in plenty who believe in the doctrines which this particular Democrat holds to be primary principles, but he has managed to make himself the especial representative and equivalent of those principles in that party, as no other man has. He has put his principles in practice in the most fearless and resolute manner, and has made himself especially obnoxious to their opponents, as the hostility to him, of which we write, clearly shows; and the consequence is that, rightly or wrongly, the country is disposed to regard his acceptance or rejection as the head of the party in the nation as an answer to its question concerning the trustworthiness of Democratic professions of honesty and sincerity."
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