IX. GREAT QUESTIONS AND GREAT ANSWERS

IX. GREAT QUESTIONS AND GREAT ANSWERS

“Who shall make answer on such themes as these?”

It is now appropriate to consider somewhat in extenso the claims of James A. Garfield to be regarded as a statesman. It must needs be in the life of every public man, more particularly in the life of a Congressman, and more particularly still in the life of him who has risen to the rank of leader of the House, that he speak much on questions of passing interest. Many of the topics which engage his attention flit away with the occasion which gave them birth. They are the issues of the day, creatures of prejudice and partisanship. Hence in the history of the life of a public man, many paragraphs will be found which merely recount the battles fought and victories won in the ordinary contests of the arena.

In the most marked contrast with this, however, is another class of questions which rise to the level of perpetual interest, affecting not only the destinies of the hour, but pregnant with the fate of the future. Not questions of the day are these, passing like a shadow over the landscape of current events; but shining rather like those orbs from whose disks the effulgence is shed which makes shadows possible. Albeit, there are themes of statesmanship vitally affecting the life of the nation; and only he, who in the heated arena of public life shows himself able to grapple with such problems, is worthy of the name of statesman.

Was James A. Garfield a statesman? In considering this question, and finding therefor a fitting answer, it is necessary clearly to understand what are the leading themes of American statesmanship. Perhaps a fair analysis of this great question will show that those topics of public discussion which rise to the dignity of questions of statesmanship will present about four leading heads:

I. Questions affecting THE NATIONALITY OF THE UNITED STATES.

II. Questions affecting THE FINANCIAL AND MONETARY SYSTEMS OF THE UNITED STATES.

III. Questions affecting THE REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES OF THE UNITED STATES.

IV. Questions concerning THE GENERAL CHARACTER AND TENDENCY OF AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS.

If it be shown that James A. Garfield proved himself able to grasp and discuss any or all of the great questions falling under this comprehensive classification, in such a manner as to throw new light upon them, to fix the status of public opinion regarding them, and to that extent to build more securely than hitherto the substructure of American greatness, then indeed is he worthy of the name of statesman. Let us then, without fear or partiality, apply the crucial test to Garfield’s public life, and see whether indeed he is the peer and fit companion for the great names of our history—for Hamilton, and Adams, and Webster, and Sumner, and Chase.

Before beginning this discussion, however, it will be necessary to remind the reader, that in considering the claims of Garfield to the rank of statesman under the outline presented above, the chronological order of the narrative will be broken up, and such a grouping made of his public speeches and papers as will best illustrate his views and establish his rank among the great men of our country.

First, then, as to questions affecting THE NATIONALITY OF THE UNITED STATES. What is the record of him whose life is here recounted concerning those great and vital themes upon which rests our perpetuity as a nation? Three utterances, his earliest, his latest, and his most characteristic, must be taken as representatives of the entire class.

On February 1, 1866, being thirty-five years of age, he presented his views on the general question of the restoration of the States lately in rebellion:

THIS IS A NATION.

“The word ‘State’, as it has been used by gentlemen in this discussion, has two meanings, as perfectly distinct as though different words had been used to express them. The confusion arising from applying the same word to two different and dissimilar objects, has had very much to do with the diverse conclusions which gentlemen have reached. They have given us the definition of a ‘state’ in the contemplation of public or international law, and have at once applied that definition and the conclusions based upon it, to the States of the American Union and the effects of war upon them. Let us examine the two meanings of the word, and endeavor to keep them distinct in their application to the questions before us.

“Phillimore, the great English publicist, says: ‘For all the purposes of international law, a state (demos, civitas, volk) may be defined to be a people permanently occupying a fixed territory, bound together by common laws, habits, and customs, into one body-politic, exercising through the medium of an organized government, independent sovereignty and control over all persons and things within its boundaries, capable of making war and peace, and of entering into all international relations with the other communities of the globe.’—Phillimore’s International Law, vol. i, sec. 65.

“Substantially the same definition maybe found in Grotius, book one, chapter one, section fourteen; in Burlamaqui, volume two, part one, chapter four, section nine; and in Vattel, book one, chapter one. The primary point of agreement in all these authorities is, that in contemplation of international law a state is absolutely sovereign, acknowledging no superior on earth. In that sense the United States is a state, a sovereign state, just as Great Britain, France, and Russia are states.

“But what is the meaning of the word State as applied to Ohio or Alabama? Is either of them a state in the sense of international law? They lack all the leading requisites of such a state. They are only the geographical subdivisions of a state; and though endowed by the people of the United States with the rights of local self-government, yet in all their external relations their sovereignty is completely destroyed, being merged in the supreme Federal Government.—Halleck’s International Law, sec. 16, page 71.

“Ohio can not make war; can not conclude peace; can not make a treaty with any foreign government, can not even make a compact with her sister States; can not regulate commerce; can not coin money; and has no flag. These indispensable attributes of sovereignty, the State of Ohio does not possess, nor does any other State of the Union. We call them States for want of a better name. We call them States, because the original Thirteen had been so designated before the Constitution was formed, but that Constitution destroyed all the sovereignty which those States were ever supposed to possess in reference to external affairs.

“I submit, Mr. Speaker, that the five great publicists—Grotius, Puffendorf, Bynkershoek, Burlamaqui, and Vattel, who have been so often quoted in this debate, and all of whom wrote more than a quarter of a century, and some nearly two centuries before our Constitution was formed, can hardly be quoted as good authorities in regard to the nature and legal relationships of the component States of the American Union.

“Even my colleague from the Columbus District [Mr. Shellabarger], in his very able discussion of this question, spoke as though a State of this Union was the same as a state in the sense of international law, with certain qualities added. I think he must admit that nearly all the leading attributes of such a state are taken from it when it becomes a State of the Union.

“Several gentlemen, during this debate, have quoted the well known doctrine of international law, ‘that war annuls all existing compacts and treaties between belligerents;’ and they have concluded, therefore, that our war has broken the Federal bond and dissolved the Union. This would be true, if the rebel States were states in the sense of international law—if our Government were not a sovereign nation, but only a league between sovereign states. I oppose to this conclusion the unanswerable proposition that this is a nation; that the rebel States are not sovereign states, and therefore their failure to achieve independence was a failure to break the Federal bond—to dissolve the Union....

“In view of the peculiar character of our Government, in what condition did the war leave the rebel States?”

He argued that by the admission of a State to the Union, the laws of the United States were extended to it. A State might violate one of these laws, but could not annul it. Each rebel State exerted every power to break away from these laws, but was unable to destroy or invalidate one of them. Each rebel State let go of the Union, but the Union did not let go of it:

“Let the stars of heaven illustrate our constellation of States. When God launched the planets upon their celestial pathway, He bound them all by the resistless power of attraction to the central sun, around which they revolved in their appointed orbits. Each may be swept by storms, may be riven by lightnings, may be rocked by earthquakes, may be devastated by all the terrestrial forces and overwhelmed in ruin, but far away in the everlasting depths the sovereign sun holds the turbulent planet in its place. This earth may be overwhelmed until the high hills are covered by the sea; it may tremble with earthquakes miles below the soil, but it must still revolve in its appointed orbit. So Alabama may overwhelm all her municipal institutions in ruin, but she can not annul the omnipotent decrees of the sovereign people of the Union. She must be held forever in her orbit of obedience and duty.

* * * * *

“Now, let us inquire how the surrender of the military power of the rebellion affected the legal condition of those States. When the rebellion collapsed, and the last armed man of the Confederacy surrendered to our forces, I affirm that there was not in one of those States a single government that we did or could recognize. There was not in one of those States, from governor down to constable, a single man whom we could recognize as authorized to exercise any official function whatever. They had formed governments alien and hostile to the Union. Not only had their officers taken no oaths to support the Constitution of the United States, but they had heaped oath upon oath to destroy it.

“I go further. I hold that there were in those States no constitutions of any binding force and effect; none that we could recognize. A constitution, in this case, can mean nothing less than a constitution of government. A constitution must constitute something, or it is no constitution. When we speak of the constitution of Alabama, we mean the constitution of the government of Alabama. When the rebels surrendered, there remained no constitution in Alabama, because there remained no government. Those States reverted into our hands by victorious war, with every municipal right and every municipal authority utterly and completely swept away.”

After citing from the highest authorities on the laws of war, he sums up the legal status of the rebellious states as follows:

“1. That, by conquest, the United States obtained complete control of the rebel territory.

“2. That every vestige of municipal authority in those States was, by secession, rebellion, and the conquest of the rebellion, utterly destroyed.

“3. That the state of war did not terminate with the actual cessation of hostilities, but that, under the laws of war, it was the duty of the President, as commander-in-chief, to establish governments over the conquered people of the insurgent States, which governments, no matter what may be their form, are really military governments, deriving their sole power from the President.

“4. That the governments thus established, are valid while the state of war continues and until Congress acts in the case.

“5. That it belongs exclusively to the legislative authority of the Government to determine the political status of the insurgent States, either by adopting the governments the President has established, or by permitting the people to form others, subject to the approval of Congress.

“It was time for Congress to act. That action should recognize, first, the stupendous facts of the war. By the Emancipation Proclamation we not only declared the slaves free, but pledged the faith of the nation to ‘maintain their freedom.’ What is freedom? It is no mere negative; no mere privilege of not being chained, bought and sold, branded or scourged. It is a tangible realization of the truths that ‘all men are created free and equal,’ and that the sanction of just government is the ‘consent of the governed.’

“These truths can never be realized until each man has a right to be heard in all matters concerning himself....

“I remember an incident in the history of the eastern church, as recorded by Gibbon, volume two, chapter twenty-eight, which illustrates the power that slavery has exercised among us. The Christians of that day, under the lead of Theophilus, undertook to destroy the heathen temples. Gibbon says:

“‘Theophilus proceeded to demolish the temple of Serapis without any other difficulties than those which he found in the weight and solidity of the materials, but these obstacles proved so insuperable that he was obliged to leave the foundations and to content himself with reducing the edifice itself to a heap of rubbish, a part of which was soon afterward cleared away to make room for a church, erected in honor of the Christian martyrs.

“‘The colossal statue of Serapis was involved in the ruin of his temple and religion. A great number of plates of different metals, artificially joined together, composed the majestic figure of the deity, who touched on either side the walls of the sanctuary. The aspect of Serapis, his sitting posture, and the scepter, which he bore in his left hand, were extremely similar to the ordinary representations of Jupiter. He was distinguished from Jupiter by the basket, or bushel, which was placed on his head, and by the emblematic monster which he held in his right hand, the head and body of a serpent branching into three tails, which were again terminated by the triple heads of a dog, a lion, and a wolf. It was confidently affirmed that if any impious hand should dare to violate the majesty of the god, the heavens and earth would instantly return to the original chaos. An intrepid soldier, animated by zeal, and armed with a weighty battle-ax, ascended the ladder, and even the Christian multitude expected with some anxiety the event of the combat. He aimed a vigorous stroke against the cheek of Serapis; the cheek fell to the ground; the thunder was still silent, and both the heavens and the earth continued to preserve their accustomed order and tranquillity. The victorious soldier repeated his blows, the huge idol was overthrown and broken in pieces, and the limbs of Serapis were ignominiously dragged through the streets of Alexandria. His mangled carcass was burnt in the amphitheater amid the shouts of the populace, and many persons attributed their conversion to this discovery of the impotence of their tutelary deity.’

“So slavery sat in our national Capitol. Its huge bulk filled the temple of our liberty, touching it from side to side. Mr. Lincoln, on the 1st of January, 1863, struck it on the cheek, and the faithless and unbelieving among us expected to see the fabric of our institutions dissolve into chaos because their idol had fallen. He struck it again; Congress and the States repeated the blow, and its unsightly carcass lies rotting in our streets. The sun shines in the heavens brighter than before. Let us remove the carcass and leave not a vestige of the monster. We shall never have done that until we have dared to come up to the spirit of the Pilgrim covenant of 1620, and declare that all men shall be consulted in regard to the disposition of their lives, liberty, and property. The Pilgrim fathers proceeded on the doctrine that every man was supposed to know best what he wanted, and had the right to a voice in the disposition of himself.”

A second fact to be recognized was that 7,000,000 white men were waiting to have their case adjudged and their political status fixed.

“As to persons we must see to it that hereafter personal liberty and personal rights are placed in the keeping of the nation; that the right to life, liberty, and property are to be guaranteed to citizens in reality, and not left to the caprice of mobs and contingencies of local legislation.... As to States, the burden of proof rests on each one of them, to show whether it is fit to enter the Federal circle in full communion of privileges. Men can not change their hearts—love what they hated, and hate what they loved—upon the issue of a battle; but our duty is to demand that before we admit them they shall give sufficient assurance that, whatever they believe or wish, their action in the future shall be such as loyal men can approve.”

How far does that speech differ from the reconstruction policy actually adopted?

Thirteen years later, on June 27, 1879, the pending bill being one for the appropriations for United States marshals, General Garfield said:

“Mr. Chairman: ‘To this favor’ it has come at last. The great fleet that set out on the 18th of March, with all its freightage and armament, is so shattered that now all the valuables it carried are embarked in this little craft, to meet whatever fate the sea and the storm may offer. This little bill contains the residuum of almost every thing that has been the subject of controversy at the present session. I will not discuss it in detail, but will speak only of its central feature, and especially of the opinions which the discussion of that feature has brought to the surface during the present session. The majority in this Congress have adopted what I consider very extreme and dangerous opinions on certain important constitutional questions. They have not only drifted back to their old attitude on the subject of State Sovereignty, but they have pushed that doctrine much further than most of their predecessors ever went before, except during the period immediately preceding the late war.

“Let me summarize them: First, there are no national elections; second, the United States has no voters; third, the States have the exclusive right to control all elections of members of Congress; fourth, the senators and representatives in Congress are State officers, or, as they have been called during the present session, ‘embassadors’ or ‘agents’ of the State; fifth, the United States has no authority to keep the peace anywhere within a State, and, in fact, has no peace to keep; sixth, the United States is not a Nation endowed with sovereign power, but is a confederacy of States; seventh, the States are sovereignties possessing inherent supreme powers; they are older than the Union, and as independent sovereignties the state governments created the Union and determined and limited the powers of the General Government.

“These declarations embody the sum total of the constitutional doctrines which the Democracy has avowed during this extra session of Congress. They form a body of doctrines which I do not hesitate to say are more extreme than was ever before held on this subject, except, perhaps, at the very crisis of secession and rebellion.

“Firmly believing that these doctrines and attempted practice of the present Congress are erroneous and pernicious, I will state briefly the counter-propositions:

“I affirm: first, that the Constitution of the United States was not created by the governments of the States, but was ordained and established by the only sovereign in this country—the common superior of both the States and the Nation—the people themselves; second, that the United States is a Nation, having a government whose powers, as defined and limited by the Constitution, operate upon all the States in their corporate capacity and upon all the people; third, that by its legislative, executive, and judicial authority the Nation is armed with adequate power to enforce all the provisions of the Constitution against all opposition of individuals or of States, at all times and all places within the Union.

“These are broad propositions; and I take the few minutes remaining to defend them. The constitutional history of this country, or, rather, the history of sovereignty and government in this country, is comprised in four sharply defined epochs:

“First. Prior to the 4th day of July, 1776, sovereignty, so far as it can be affirmed of this country, was lodged in the crown of Great Britain. Every member of every colony (the colonists were not citizens, but subjects) drew his legal rights from the crown of Great Britain. ‘Every acre of land in this country was then held mediately or immediately by grants from that crown,’ and ‘all the civil authority then existing or exercised here flowed from the head of the British empire.’

“Second. On the 4th day of July, 1776, the people of these colonies, asserting their natural inherent right as sovereigns, withdrew the sovereignty from the crown of Great Britain, and reserved it to themselves. In so far as they delegated this national authority at all, they delegated it to the Continental Congress assembled at Philadelphia. That Congress, by general consent, became the supreme government of this country—executive, judicial, and legislative in one. During the whole of its existence it wielded the supreme power of the new Nation.

“Third. On the 1st day of March, 1781, the same sovereign power, the people, withdrew the authority from the Continental Congress, and lodged it, so far as they lodged it at all, with the Confederation, which, though a league of States, was declared to be a perpetual union.

“Fourth. When at last our fathers found the Confederation too weak and inefficient for the purposes of a great nation, they abolished it, and lodged the national authority, enlarged and strengthened by new powers, in the Constitution of the United States, where, in spite of all assaults, it still remains. All these great acts were done by the only sovereign in this Republic, the people themselves.

“That no one may charge that I pervert history to sustain my own theories, I call attention to the fact that not one of the colonies declared itself free and independent. Neither Virginia nor Massachusetts threw off its allegiance to the British crown as a colony. The great declaration was made not even by all the colonies as colonies, but it was made in the name and by authority of ‘all the good people of the colonies’ as one people.

“Mr. Chairman, the dogma of State Sovereignty, which has re-awakened to such vigorous life in this chamber, has borne such bitter fruits and entailed such suffering upon our people that it deserves more particular notice. It should be noticed that the word ‘sovereignty’ can not be fitly applied to any government in this country. It is not found in our constitution. It is a feudal word, born of the despotism of the Middle Ages, and was unknown even in imperial Rome. A ‘sovereign’ is a person, a prince, who has subjects that owe him allegiance. There is no one paramount sovereign in the United States. There is no person here who holds any title or authority whatever, except the official authority given him by law. Americans are not subjects, but citizens. Our only sovereign is the whole people. To talk about the ‘inherent sovereignty’ of a corporation—an artificial person—is to talk nonsense; and we ought to reform our habit of speech on that subject.

“But what do gentlemen mean when they tell us that a State is sovereign? What does sovereignty mean in its accepted use, but a political corporation having no superior? Is a State of this Union such a corporation? Let us test it by a few examples drawn from the Constitution. No State of this Union can make war or conclude a peace. Without the consent of Congress it can not raise or support an army or a navy. It can not make a treaty with a foreign power, nor enter into any agreement or compact with another State. It can not levy imposts or duties on imports nor exports. It can not coin money. It can not regulate commerce. It can not authorize a single ship to go into commission anywhere on the high seas; if it should, that ship would be seized as a pirate or confiscated by the laws of the United States. A State can not emit bills of credit. It can enact no law which makes any thing but gold and silver a legal tender. It has no flag except the flag of the Union. And there are many other subjects on which the States are forbidden by the Constitution to legislative.

“How much inherent sovereignty is left in a corporation which is thus shorn of all these great attributes of sovereignty?

“But this is not all. The Supreme Court of the United States may declare null and void any law or any clause of the constitution of a State which happens to be in conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States. Again, the States appear as plaintiffs and defendants before the Supreme Court of the United States. They may sue each other; and, until the Eleventh Amendment was adopted, a citizen might sue a State. These ‘sovereigns’ may all be summoned before their common superior to be judged. And yet they are endowed with supreme inherent sovereignty!

“Again, the government of a State may be absolutely abolished by Congress, in case it is not republican in form. And, finally, to cap the climax of this absurd pretension, every right possessed by one of these ‘sovereign’ States, every inherent sovereign right, except the single right to equal representation in the Senate, may be taken away, without its consent, by the vote of two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the States. But, in spite of all these disabilities, we hear them paraded as independent, sovereign States, the creators of the Union and the dictators of its powers. How inherently ‘sovereign’ must be that State west of the Mississippi which the Nation bought and paid for with the public money, and permitted to come into the Union a half century after the Constitution was adopted! And yet we are told that the States are inherently sovereign and created the National Government.

“The dogma of State Sovereignty in alliance with chattel slavery made its appeal to that court of last resort where the laws are silent, and where kings and nations appear in arms for judgment. In that awful court of war two questions were tried: Shall slavery live? And is a State so sovereign that it may nullify the laws and destroy the Union? These two questions were tried on the thousand battle-fields of the war; and if war ever ‘legislates,’ as a leading Democrat of Ohio once wisely affirmed, then our war legislated finally upon those subjects, and determined, beyond all controversy, that slavery should never again live in this Republic, and that there is not sovereignty enough in any State to authorize its people either to destroy the Union or nullify its laws.”

Ten years ago a biographer who loved Garfield and cared for his fame would have omitted the speech from which we are about to give extracts. It is, however, no secret that, in 1871, General Garfield split with his party upon what was known in contemporary politics as “The Force Bill.” This bill was drawn, under the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, to protect the Republicans of the Southern States from outrage and murder. The President had laid before Congress a most terrible state of affairs. The Ku-Klux Klan, that bloody and mysterious organization, which was the terror of loyal men, and the guilty perpetrator of unnumbered crimes, thrust its hideous head into the face of the men who had fought for the Union. Murder, ostracism, incendiarism, bull-dozing, intimidation, ballot-box stuffing, and a thousand other outrages were committed. The best picture of the time is in “The Fool’s Errand.” These things, perhaps, (we do not say so) magnified by fear, hate, and political rancor, were too much for the Republican Congress and the men who had worn the blue under Southern skies. There was terrible bitterness. Revenge darkened the Northern heart. The majority in Congress resolved to clutch the demon’s throat with the iron grip of law. In a former chapter we spoke of the battle as an experience, and how it perpetually reproduced itself in the mind of its participants. The illustration of that is found in the attitude of President Grant and the soldier majority in Congress at the time of which we are writing. The “Force Bill” was really a tremendous battery. It was surrounded with sulphurous smoke, and was as grim as death.

But to the rule General Garfield was an exception. At the close of the war, he said, we passed into another political epoch. He believed in the Nation, but the calm balance of his mind refused assent to any extreme measure. There was no wavering on the supremacy of the Nation. But after all this was a Republic, and despotism, the one extreme, was as fatal as disunion, the other. General Garfield opposed the extreme parts of the “Force Bill.” He looked to the future of our country as well as the past. We summarize his elaborate speech:

THE FORCE BILL.

“Mr. Speaker: I am not able to understand the mental organization of the man who can consider this bill, and the subject of which it treats, as free from very great difficulties. He must be a man of very moderate abilities, whose ignorance is bliss, or a man of transcendant genius whom no difficulties can daunt and whose clear vision no cloud obscures.

“The distinguished gentleman [Mr. Shellabarger] who introduced the bill from the committee, very appropriately said that it requires us to enter upon unexplored territory. That territory, Mr. Speaker, is the neutral ground of all political philosophy; the neutral ground for which rival theories have been struggling in all ages. There are two ideas so utterly antagonistic that, when in any nation, either has gained absolute and complete possession of that neutral ground, the ruin of that nation has invariably followed. The one is that despotism which swallows and absorbs all power in a single-central government; the other is that extreme doctrine of local sovereignty which makes nationality impossible, and resolves a general government into anarchy and chaos. It makes but little difference, as to the final result, which of these ideas drives the other from the field; in either case ruin follows.

“The result exhibited by the one was seen in the Amphictyonic and Achæan leagues of ancient Greece, of which Madison, in the twentieth number of the Federalist, says:

“‘The inevitable result of all was imbecility in the government, discord among the provinces, foreign influences and indignities, a precarious existence in peace, and peculiar calamities in war.’

“This is a fitting description of all nations which have carried the doctrine of local self-government so far as to exclude the doctrine of nationality. They were not nations, but mere leagues, bound together by common consent, ready to fall to pieces at the demand of any refractory member. The opposing idea was never better illustrated than when Louis XIV. entered the French Assembly, booted and spurred, and girded with the sword of ancestral kings, and said to the Deputies of France: ‘The State! I am the State!’

“Between these opposite and extreme theories of government, the people have been tossed from century to century; and it has been only when these ideas have been in reasonable equipoise, when this neutral ground has been held in joint occupancy, and usurped by neither, that popular liberty and national life have been possible. How many striking illustrations of this do we see in the history of France! The deposition of Louis XIV., followed by the Reign of Terror, when liberty had run mad and France was a vast scene of blood and ruin! We see it again in our day. Only a few years ago, the theory of personal government had placed in the hands of Napoleon III., absolute and irresponsible power. The communes of France were crushed, and local liberty existed no longer. Then followed Sedan and the rest. On the first day of last month, when France was trying to rebuild her ruined Government, when the Prussian cannon had scarcely ceased thundering against the walls of Paris, a deputy of France rose in the National Assembly and moved, as the first step toward the safety of his country, that a committee of thirty should be chosen, to be called the Committee of Decentralization. But it was too late to save France from the fearful reaction from despotism. The news comes to us, under the sea, that on Saturday last, the cry was ringing through France: ‘Death to the Priests!’ and ‘Death to the Rich!’ and the swords of the citizens of that new republic are now wet with each other’s blood.

EQUIPOISE OF OUR GOVERNMENT.

“The records of time show no nobler or wiser work done by human hands than that of our fathers when they framed this Republic. Beginning in a wilderness world, they wrought unfettered by precedent, untrammeled by custom, unawed by kings or dynasties. With the history of other nations before them, they surveyed the new field. In the progress of their work they encountered these antagonistic ideas to which I have referred. They attempted to trace through that neutral ground the boundary line across which neither force should pass. The result of their labors is our Constitution and frame of government. I never contemplate the result without feeling that there was more than mortal wisdom in the men who produced it. It has seemed to me that they borrowed their thought from Him who constructed the universe and put it in motion. For nothing more aptly describes the character of our Republic than the solar system, launched into space by the hand of the Creator, where the central sun is the great power around which revolve all the planets in their appointed orbits. But while the sun holds in the grasp of its attractive power the whole system, and imparts its light and heat to all, yet each individual planet is under the sway of laws peculiar to itself.

“Under the sway of terrestrial laws, winds blow, waters flow, and all the tenantries of the planet live and move. So, sir, the States move on in their orbits of duty and obedience, bound to the central Government by this Constitution, which is their supreme law, while each State is making laws and regulations of its own, developing its own energies, maintaining its own industries, managing its local affairs in its own way, subject only to the supreme but beneficent control of the Union. When States Rights ran mad, put on the form of secession, and attempted to drag the States out of Union, we saw the grand lessons taught, in all the battles of the late war, that a State could no more be hurled from the Union, without ruin to the Nation, than could a planet be thrown from its orbit without dragging after it, to chaos and ruin, the whole solar universe.

“Sir, the great war for the Union has vindicated the centripetal power of the Nation, and has exploded, forever I trust, the disorganizing theory of State Sovereignty, which slavery attempted to impose upon this country. But we should never forget that there is danger in the opposite direction. The destruction, or serious crippling of the principle of local government, would be as fatal to liberty as secession would have been fatal to the Union.

“The first experiment which our fathers tried in government-making after the War of Independence was a failure, because the central power conferred in the Articles of Confederation was not strong enough. The second, though nobly conceived, became almost a failure, because slavery attempted so to interpret the Constitution as to reduce the nation again to a confederacy, a mere league between sovereign States. But we have now vindicated and secured the centripetal power; let us see that the centrifugal force is not destroyed, but that the grand and beautiful equipoise may be maintained.

“It will not be denied that before the adoption of the last three amendments, it was the settled interpretation of the Constitution that the protection of the life and property of private citizens belonged to the State governments entirely.... Now three amendments have been added to the Constitution, and it will not be denied that each of these amendments has changed the relation of Congress to the citizens of the States.”

Garfield spoke with his eye on the future: “This debate will become historic as the earliest legislative interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment,” he said. He reviewed the debates accompanying the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. Two propositions had been before Congress. The essential parts of the one adopted were—

“The Congress shall have power to enforce by appropriate legislation, the following provisions, to wit:

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

“And this is the rejected clause:

“The Congress shall have power to make all laws which may be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens in these several States equal protection in the rights of life, liberty, and property.

“The one exerts its force directly upon the States, laying restriction and limitations upon their power, and enabling Congress to enforce these limitations. The other, the rejected proposition, would have brought the power of Congress to bear directly upon the citizens, and contained a clear grant of power to Congress to legislate directly for the protection of life, liberty, and property within the States. The first limited, but did not oust the jurisdiction of the State over these subjects. The second gave Congress plenary power to cover the whole subject with its jurisdiction, and, as it seems to me, to the exclusion of the State authorities.

“Mr. Speaker, unless we ignore both the history and the language of these clauses we can not, by any reasonable interpretation, give to the section as it stands in the Constitution, the force and effect of the rejected clause.”

Then followed an exhaustive discussion of the different clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, after which he passed to the provisions of the pending bill. Southern outrages had been stated by the President to exist. The trouble was not unequal laws, but their maladministration and denial of protection under them. This demanded legislation. But Congress had no power to assume original jurisdiction of the matter. It could only define and declare the offense, and should employ no terms which asserted the power of Congress to take jurisdiction, until such denial of rights was clearly made. Passing then to the extreme and most objectionable parts of the bill he said:

“But, Mr. Speaker, there is one provision in the fourth section which appears to me both unwise and unnecessary. It is proposed not only to authorize the suspension of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus, but to authorize the declaration of martial law in the disturbed districts.

“I do not deny, but I affirm, the right of Congress to authorize the suspension of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus whenever, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it. Such action has been, and may again be, necessary to the safety of the Republic; but I call the attention of the House to the fact that never but once in the history of this Government has Congress suspended the great privileges of this writ, and then it was not done until after two years of war had closed all the ordinary tribunals of justice in the rebellious districts, and the great armies of the Union, extending from Maryland to the Mexican line, were engaged in a death-struggle with the armies of the rebellion. It was not until the third day of March, 1863, that the Congress of the United States found the situation so full of peril as to make it their duty to suspend this greatest privilege enjoyed by Anglo-Saxon people. Are we ready to say that an equal peril confronts us to-day?

“My objections to authorizing this suspension implies no distrust of the wisdom or patriotism of the President. I do not believe he would employ this power were we to confer it upon him; and if he did employ it, I do not doubt he would use it with justice and wisdom. But what we do on this occasion will be quoted as a precedent hereafter, when other men with other purposes may desire to confer this power on another President for purposes that may not aid in securing public liberty and public peace.

“But this section provides no safeguard for citizens who may be arrested during the suspension of the writ. There is no limit to the time during which men may be held as prisoners. Nothing in the section requires them to be delivered over to the courts. Nothing in it gives them any other protection than the will of the commander who orders their arrest.”

* * * * *

“But, sir, this fourth section goes a hundred bow-shots farther than any similar legislation of Congress during the wildest day of the rebellion. It authorizes the declaration of martial law. We are called upon to provide by law for the suspension of all law! Do gentlemen remember what martial law is? Refer to the digest of opinions of the Judge Advocate-General of the United States, and you will find a terse definition which gleams like a flash of a sword-blade. The Judge Advocate says: ‘Martial law is the will of the general who commands the army.’ And Congress is here asked to declare martial law. Why, sir, it is the pride and boast of England that martial law has not existed in that country since the Petition of Right in the thirty-first year of Charles II. Three years ago the Lord Chief-Justice of England came down from the high court over which he was presiding to review the charge of another judge to the grand jury, and he there announced that the power to declare martial law no longer existed in England. In 1867, the same judge, in the case of the Queen vs Nelson, uttered this sentence:

“‘There is no such law in existence as martial law, and no power in the Crown to proclaim it.’

“In a recent treatise, entitled The Nation, a work of great power and research, the author, Mr. Mulford, says: ‘The declaration of martial law, or the suspension of habeas corpus, is the intermission of the ordinary course of law, and of the tribunals to which an appeal may be made. It places the locality included in its operations no longer under the government of law. It interrupts the process of rights and the procedure of courts and restricts the independence of civil administration. There is substituted for these the intention of the individual. To this there is in the civil order no formal limitation. In its immediate action it allows beyond itself no obligation and acknowledges no responsibility. Its command or its decree is the only law; its movement may be secret, and its decisions are opened to the inquiry of no judge and the investigation of no tribunal. There is no positive power which may act, or be called upon to act, to stay its caprice or to check its arbitrary career since judgment and execution are in its own command, and the normal action and administration is suspended and the organized force of the whole is subordinate to it.’

“Sir, this provision means war, or it means nothing; and I ask this House whether we are now ready to take this step? Shall we ‘cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war?’

“I have taken a humble part in one war, and I hope I shall always be ready to do any duty that the necessities of the country may require of me; but I am not willing to talk war or to declare war in advance of the terrible necessity. Are there no measures within our reach which may aid in preventing war? When a savage war lately threatened our Western frontiers we sent our Commissioners of Peace in the hope of avoiding war. Have we done all in our power to avoid that which this section contemplates? I hope the committee will bring a companion measure that looks toward peace and enable us to send the olive branch with the sword.”

This speech marked the separation of General Garfield from the Stalwart wing of the Republican party. It was never forgiven nor forgotten. It showed his balance of mind, his avoidance of extremes. The time when he delivered it was one of extremes. It was an epoch of reaction. It was verging toward the period when Sumner and Adams and Greeley were to forsake the party they had helped to create. It was a time when the fierce passions of war were beginning to find an opponent in the struggling instinct of reunion and peace. It was a time when the great radicals, who had fought slavery to its death, were to swing to the other extreme of loving gush and apologetic forgiveness toward a South which sat crouching in the Temple of Liberty, still maddened with the wild insanity of war. It was a time, on the other hand, when the great war leaders, gorged with the bloody spoils of victory, were to know no forgiveness, no forgetfulness, but to plant the iron heel of despotism upon the prostrate and bleeding foe. In this time of extremes General Garfield took the middle course. He remained a true Republican, but he recoiled from brutalism toward the South. Now that the passions of the hour have passed away, we believe that his speech on the enforcement of the Fourteenth Amendment will stand as the wisest utterance of the times. It rises above the level of partisanship to that of statesmanship. In the midst of the tempest of popular excitement over Southern outrages he was calm. As he afterwards said in his nominating speech at Chicago:

“It is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when sunlight bathes its smooth surface, then the astronomer and surveyor takes the level from which he measures all terrestrial heights and depths.”

This was the secret of all of Garfield’s views. In spite of political fears and dogmas, in spite of partisan doubts and dismay, he was right. Therefore, in his answers to the great questions affecting the nationality of the United States, James A. Garfield is entitled to the historic rank of statesman.

We will next inquire to what rank Garfield’s utterances on questions affecting THE FINANCIAL AND MONETARY SYSTEMS OF THE UNITED STATES BELONG. It has been noticed that this and the succeeding topic formed General Garfield’s specialty. In the epoch in which he lived they were the paramount themes of politics. He himself called the financial question the modern political Sphinx. For the last eight years, inflation, hard money, greenbacks, etc., had been discussed from every point of the compass, in every key and to every tune. Men thought it was a new thing. Years before the public clamor, General Garfield took his position on the financial question. He foresaw and foretold the experience of the country before the public mind had rolled its heavy eyes toward the subject. It has been claimed that on the financial question Garfield was ten years ahead of his generation; that he was a pioneer and leader in every sense in the advance toward the resumption of specie payments and a stable currency. Not in 1874, when the first great inflation bill ran its rapid career, nor in 1876, nor 1878, when the advocates of paper money had organized themselves into a political party, did he come forward with arguments on the currency for the first time. It was in 1866 that he turned the first furrow in Congress. On March 16th of that year, he enunciated, in a short but vigorous speech, the basal principles of finance, which in later efforts he was to elaborate and fortify with every argument or authority which could appeal to the human understanding. From that first position Garfield never receded. Not for a moment did he cease to regard irredeemable and inflated paper currency an unmixed evil, and resumption as the main end of the legislation of the epoch. His speeches on finance cover the entire field, and are very numerous. From two or three we present copious extracts. On May 15, 1868, he delivered a speech which was, and is, a complete manual of the principles of sound financial policy:

“I am aware that financial subjects are dull and uninviting in comparison with those heroic themes which have absorbed the attention of Congress for the last five years. To turn from the consideration of armies and navies, victories and defeats, to the array of figures which exhibits the debt, expenditure, taxation, and industry of the nation, requires no little courage and self-denial; but to these questions we must come, and to their solution Congress, political parties, and all thoughtful citizens must give their best efforts for many years to come.

“In April, 1861, there began in this country an industrial revolution, not yet completed, as gigantic in its proportions, and as far-reaching in its consequences, as the political and military revolution through which we have passed. As the first step to any intelligent discussion of the currency, it is necessary to examine the character and progress of that industrial revolution.

“The year 1860 was one of remarkable prosperity in all branches of business. For seventy years no Federal tax-gatherer had ever been seen among the laboring population of the United States. Our public debt was less than sixty-five million dollars. The annual expenditures of the Government, including interest on the public debt, were less than sixty-four million dollars. The revenues from customs alone amounted to six-sevenths of the expenditures. The value of our agricultural products for that year amounted to $1,625,000,000. Our cotton crop alone was two billion one hundred and fifty-five million pounds, and we supplied to the markets of the world seven-eighths of all the cotton consumed. Our merchant marine engaged in foreign trade amounted to two million five hundred and forty-six thousand two hundred and thirty-seven tons, and promised soon to rival the immense carrying trade of England.

“Let us now observe the effect of the war on the various departments of business. From the moment the first hostile gun was fired, the Federal and State governments became gigantic consumers. As far as production was concerned, eleven States were completely separated from the Union. Two million laborers, more than one-third of the adult population of the Northern States, were withdrawn from the ranks of producers, and became only consumers of wealth. The Federal Government became an insatiable devourer. Leaving out of account the vast sums expended by States, counties, cities, towns, and individuals, for the payment of bounties, for the relief of sick and wounded soldiers and their families, and omitting the losses, which can never be estimated, of property destroyed by hostile armies, I shall speak only of expenditures which appear on the books of the Federal Treasury. From the 30th of June, 1861, to the 30th of June, 1865, there were paid out of the Federal Treasury $3,340,996,211, making an aggregate during these four years of more than $836,000,000 per annum.

“From the official records of the Treasury Department it appears that, from the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775 to the beginning of the late rebellion, the total expenditures of the Government for all purposes, including the assumed war debts of the States, amounted to $2,250,000,000. The expenditure of four years of the rebellion were nearly $1,100,000,000 more than all the other Federal expenses since the Declaration of Independence. The debt of England, which had its origin in the revolution of 1688, and was increased by more than one hundred years of war and other political disasters, had reached in 1793 the sum of $1,268,000,000. During the twenty-two years that followed, while England was engaged in a life and death struggle with Napoleon (the greatest war in history save our own), $3,056,000,000 were added to her debt. In our four years of war we spent $300,000,000 more than the amount by which England increased her debt in twenty-two years of war; almost as much as she had increased it in one hundred and twenty-five years of war. Now, the enormous demand which this expenditure created for all the products of industry stimulated to an unparalleled degree every department of business. The plow, furnace, mill, loom, railroad, steamboat, telegraph—all were driven to their utmost capacity. Warehouses were emptied; and the great reserves of supply, which all nations in a normal state keep on hand, were exhausted to meet the demands of the great consumer. For many months the Government swallowed three millions per day of the products of industry. Under the pressure of this demand, prices rose rapidly in every department of business. Labor every-where found quick and abundant returns. Old debts were canceled, and great fortunes were made.

“For the transaction of this enormous business an increased amount of currency was needed; but I doubt if any member of this House can be found bold enough to deny that the deluge of Treasury notes poured upon the country during the war was far greater even than the great demands of business. Let it not be forgotten, however, that the chief object of these issues was not to increase the currency of the country. They were authorized with great reluctance, and under the pressure of overwhelming necessity, as a temporary expedient to meet the demands of the Treasury. They were really forced loans in the form of Treasury notes. By the act of July 17, 1861, an issue of demand notes was authorized to the amount of $50,000,000. By the act of August 5, 1861, this amount was increased $50,000,000 more. By the act of February 25, 1862, an additional issue of $150,000,000 was authorized. On the 17th of the same month, an unlimited issue of fractional currency was authorized. On the 17th of January, 1873, an issue of $150,000,000 more was authorized, which was increased $50,000,000 by the act of March 3d of the same year. This act also authorized the issue of one and two years’ Treasury notes, bearing interest at five per cent., to be a legal tender for their face, to the amount of $400,000,000. By the act of June 30, 1864, an issue of six per cent. compound-interest notes, to be a legal tender for their face, was authorized, to the amount of $200,000,000. In addition to this, many other forms of paper obligation were authorized, which, though not a legal tender, performed many of the functions of currency. By the act of March 1, 1862, the issue of an unlimited amount of certificates of indebtedness was authorized, and within ninety days after the passage of the act there had been issued and were outstanding of these certificates more than $156,000,000. Of course these issues were not all outstanding at the same time, but the acts show how great was the necessity for loans during the war.

“The law which made the vast volume of United States notes a legal tender operated as an act of general bankruptcy. The man who loaned $1,000 in July, 1861, payable in three years, was compelled by this law to accept at maturity, as a full discharge of the debt, an amount of currency equal in value to $350 of the money he loaned. Private indebtedness was every-where canceled. Rising prices increased the profits of business, but this prosperity was caused by the great demand for products, and not by the abundance of paper money. As a means of transacting the vast business of the country, a great volume of currency was indispensable, and its importance can not well be overestimated. But let us not be led into the fatal error of supposing that paper money created the business or produced the wealth. As well might it be alleged that our rivers and canals produce the grain which they float to market. Like currency, the channels of commerce stimulate production, but can not nullify the inexorable law of demand and supply.

“Mr. Chairman, I have endeavored to trace the progress of our industrial revolution in passing from peace to war. In returning from war to peace all the conditions were reversed. At once the Government ceased to be an all-devouring consumer. Nearly two million able-bodied men were discharged from the army and navy and enrolled in the ranks of the producers. The expenditures of the Government, which, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1865, amounted to $1,290,000,000, were reduced to $520,000,000 in 1866; to $346,000,000 in 1867; and, if the retrenchment measures recommended by the Special Commissioner of the Revenue be adopted, another year will bring them below $300,000,000.

“Thus during the first year after the war the demands of the Federal Government as a consumer decreased sixty per cent.; and in the second year the decrease had reached seventy-four per cent., with a fair prospect of a still further reduction.

“The recoil of this sudden change would have produced great financial disaster in 1866, but for the fact that there was still open to industry the work of replacing the wasted reserves of supply, which, in all countries in a healthy state of business, are estimated to be sufficient for two years. During 1866, the fall in price of all articles of industry amounted to an average of ten per cent. One year ago a table was prepared, at my request, by Mr. Edward Young, in the office of the Special Commissioner of the Revenue, exhibiting a comparison of wholesale prices at New York in December, 1865, and December, 1866. It shows that in ten leading articles of provisions there was an average decline of twenty-two per cent., though beef, flour, and other breadstuffs remained nearly stationary. On cotton and woolen goods, boots, shoes, and clothing, the decline was thirty per cent. On the products of manufacture and mining, including coal, cordage, iron, lumber, naval stores, oils, tallow, tin, and wool, the decline was twenty-five per cent. The average decline on all commodities was at least ten per cent. According to the estimates of the Special Commissioner of the Revenue in his last report, the average decline during 1867 has amounted at least to ten per cent. more. During the past two years Congress has provided by law for reducing internal taxation $100,000,000; and the act passed a few weeks ago has reduced the tax on manufactures to the amount of $64,000,000 per annum. The repeal of the cotton tax will make a further reduction of $20,000,000. State and municipal taxation and expenditures have also been greatly reduced. The work of replacing these reserves delayed the shock and distributed its effects, but could not avert the inevitable result. During the past two years, one by one, the various departments of industry produced a supply equal to the demand. Then followed a glutted market, a fall in prices, and a stagnation of business, by which thousands of laborers were thrown out of employment.

“If to this it be added that the famine in Europe and the drought in many of the agricultural States of the Union have kept the price of provisions from falling as other commodities have fallen, we shall have a sufficient explanation of the stagnation of business, and the unusual distress among our people.

“This industrial revolution has been governed by laws beyond the reach of Congress. No legislation could have arrested it at any stage of its progress. The most that could possibly be done by Congress was, to take advantage of the prosperity it occasioned to raise a revenue for the support of the Government, and to mitigate the severity of its subsequent pressure, by reducing the vast machinery of war to the lowest scale possible. Manifestly nothing can be more absurd than to suppose that the abundance of currency produced by the prosperity of 1863, 1864, and 1865, or that the want of it is the cause of our present stagnation.

“In order to reach a satisfactory understanding of the currency question, it is necessary to consider somewhat fully the nature and functions of money or any substitute for it.

“The theory of money which formed the basis of the ‘mercantile system’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been rejected by all leading financiers and political economists for the last seventy-five years. That theory asserted that money is wealth; that the great object of every nation should be to increase its amount of gold and silver; that this was a direct increase of national wealth.

“It is now held as an indisputable truth that money is an instrument of trade, and performs but two functions. It is a measure of value and a medium of exchange.

“In cases of simple barter, where no money is used, we estimate the relative values of the commodities to be exchanged in dollars and cents, it being our only universal measure of value.

“As a medium of exchange, money is to all business transactions what ships are to the transportation of merchandise. If a hundred vessels of a given tonnage are just sufficient to carry all the commodities between two ports, any increase of the number of vessels will correspondingly decrease the value of each as an instrument of commerce; any decrease below one hundred will correspondingly increase the value of each.

“The functions of money as a medium of exchange, though more complicated in their application, are precisely the same in principle as the functions of the vessels in the case I have supposed.

“If we could ascertain the total value of all the exchanges effected in this country by means of money in any year, and could ascertain how many dollars’ worth of such exchanges can be effected in a year by one dollar in money, we should know how much money the country needed for the business transactions of that year. Any decrease below that amount will correspondingly increase the value of each dollar as an instrument of exchange. Any increase above that amount will correspondingly decrease the value of each dollar. If that amount be doubled, each dollar of the whole mass will perform but half the amount of business it did before; will be worth but half its former value as a medium of exchange.

“Recurring to our illustration: if, instead of sailing vessels, steam vessels were substituted, a much smaller tonnage would be required; so, if it were found that $500,000,000 of paper, each worth seventy cents in gold, were sufficient for the business of the country, it is equally evident that $350,000,000 of gold substituted for the paper would perform precisely the same amount of business.

“It should be remembered, also, that any improvement in the mode of transacting business, by which the actual use of money is in part dispensed with, reduces the total amount needed by the country. How much has been accomplished in this direction by recent improvements in banking may be seen in the operations of the clearing-houses in our great cities.

“The records of the New York Clearing House show that from October 11, 1853, the date of its establishment, to October 11, 1867, the exchanges amounted to nearly $180,000,000,000; to effect which, less than $8,000,000,000 of money were used, an average of about four per cent.; that is, exchanges were made to the amount of $100,000,000 by the payment of $4,000,000 of money.

“It is also a settled principle that all deposits in banks, drawn upon by checks and drafts, really serve the purpose of money.

“The amount of currency needed in the country depends, as we have seen, upon the amount of business transacted by means of money. The amount of business, however, is varied by many causes which are irregular and uncertain in their operation. An Indian war, deficient or abundant harvests, an overflow of the cotton lands of the South, a bread famine or war in Europe, and a score of such causes entirely beyond the reach of legislation, may make money deficient this year and abundant next. The needed amount varies also from month to month in the same year. More money is required in the autumn, when the vast products of agriculture are being moved to market, than when the great army of laborers are in winter-quarters, awaiting the seed-time.

“When the money of the country is gold and silver, it adapts itself to the fluctuations of business without the aid of legislation. If, at any time, we have more than is needed, the surplus flows off to other countries through the channels of international commerce. If less, the deficiency is supplied through the same channels. Thus the monetary equilibrium is maintained. So immense is the trade of the world that the golden streams pouring from California and Australia in the specie circulation, are soon absorbed in the great mass and equalized throughout the world, as the waters of all the rivers are spread upon the surface of all the seas.

“Not so, however, with an inconvertible paper currency. Excepting the specie used in the payment of customs and the interest on our public debt, we are cut off from the money currents of the world. Our currency resembles rather the waters of an artificial lake, which lie in stagnation or rise to full banks at the caprice of the gate-keeper.

“Gold and silver abhor depreciated paper money, and will not keep company with it. If our currency be more abundant than business demands, not a dollar of it can go abroad; if deficient, not a dollar of gold will come in to supply the lack. There is no legislature on earth wise enough to adjust such a currency to the wants of the country.

“Let us examine more minutely the effect of such a currency upon prices. Suppose that the business transactions of the country at the present time require $350,000,000 in gold. It is manifest that if there are just $350,000,000 of legal-tender notes, and no other money in the country, each dollar will perform the full functions of a gold dollar, so far as the work of exchange is concerned. Now, business remaining the same, let $350,000,000 more of the same kind of notes be pressed into circulation. The whole volume, as thus increased, can do no more than all the business. Each dollar will accomplish just half the work that a dollar did before the increase; but as the nominal dollar is fixed by law, the effect is shown in prices being doubled. It requires two of these dollars to make the same purchase that one dollar made before the increase. It would require some time for the business of the country to adjust itself to the new conditions, and great derangement of values would ensue; but the result would at last be reached in all transactions which are controlled by the law of demand and supply.

“No such change of values can occur without cost. Somebody must pay for it. Who pays in this case? We have seen that doubling the currency finally results in reducing the purchasing power of each dollar one-half; hence every man who held a legal-tender note at the time of the increase, and continued to hold it till the full effect of the increase was produced, suffered a loss of fifty per cent. of its value; in other words, he paid a tax to the amount of half of all the currency in his possession. This new issue, therefore, by depreciating the value of all the currency, cost the holders of the old issue $175,000,000; and if the new notes were received at their nominal value at the date of issue, their holders paid a tax of $175,000,000 more. No more unequal or unjust mode of taxation could possibly be devised. It would be tolerated only by being so involved in the transactions of business as to be concealed from observation; but it would be no less real because hidden.

“But some one may say: ‘This depreciation would fall upon capitalists and rich men, who are able to bear it.’

“If this were true, it would be no less unjust. But, unfortunately, the capitalists would suffer less than any other class. The new issue would be paid in the first place in large amounts to the creditors of the Government; it would pass from their hands before the depreciation had taken full effect, and, passing down step by step through the ranks of middle-men, the dead weight would fall at last upon the laboring classes in the increased price of all the necessaries of life. It is well known that in a general rise of prices, wages are among the last to rise. This principle was illustrated in the report of the Special Commissioner of the Revenue for the year 1866. It is there shown that from the beginning of the war to the end of 1866, the average price of all commodities had risen ninety per cent. Wages, however, had risen but sixty per cent. A day’s labor would purchase but two-thirds as many of the necessaries of life as it would before. The wrong is, therefore, inflicted on the laborer long before his income can be adjusted to his increased expenses. It was, in view of this truth, that Daniel Webster said, in one of his ablest speeches:

“‘Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money. This is the most effectual of inventions to fertilize the rich man’s field by the sweat of the poor man’s brow. Ordinary tyranny, oppression, excessive taxation, these bear lightly on the happiness of the mass of the community, compared with a fraudulent currency and the robberies committed by depreciated paper.’

“The fraud committed and the burdens imposed upon the people, in the case we have supposed, would be less intolerable if all business transactions could be really adjusted to the new conditions; but even this is impossible. All debts would be canceled, all contracts fulfilled by payment in these notes—not at their real value, but for their face. All salaries fixed by law, the pay of every soldier in the army, of every sailor in the navy, and all pensions and bounties, would be reduced to half their former value. In these cases the effect is only injurious. Let it never be forgotten that every depreciation of our currency results in robbing the one hundred and eighty thousand pensioners, maimed heroes, crushed and bereaved widows, and homeless orphans, who sit helpless at our feet. And who would be benefited by this policy? A pretense of apology might be offered for it, if the Government could save what the people lose. But the system lacks the support of even that selfish and immoral consideration. The depreciation caused by the over-issue in the case we have supposed, compels the Government to pay just that per cent. more on all the contracts it makes, on all the loans it negotiates, on all the supplies it purchases; and to crown all, it must at last redeem all its legal-tender notes in gold coin, dollar for dollar. The advocates of repudiation have not yet been bold enough to deny this.

“I have thus far considered the influence of a redundant paper currency on the country when its trade and industry are in a healthy and normal state. I now call attention to its effect in producing an unhealthy expansion of business, in stimulating speculation and extravagance, and in laying the sure foundation of commercial revulsion and widespread ruin. This principle is too well understood to require any elaboration here. The history of all modern nations is full of examples. One of the ablest American writers on banks and banking, Mr. Gouge, thus sums up the result of his researches:

“‘The history of all our bank pressures and panics has been the same in 1825, in 1837, and in 1843; and the cause is given in these two simple words—universal expansion.’

“There still remains to be considered the effect of depreciated currency on our trade with other nations. By raising prices at home higher than they are abroad, imports are largely increased beyond the exports; our coin must go abroad; or, what is far worse for us, our bonds, which have also suffered depreciation, and are purchased by foreigners at seventy cents on the dollar. During the whole period of high prices occasioned by the war, gold and bonds have been steadily going abroad, notwithstanding our tariff duties, which average nearly fifty per cent. ad valorem. More than five hundred million dollars of our bonds are now held in Europe, ready to be thrown back upon us when any war or other sufficient disturbance shall occur. No tariff rates short of actual prohibition can prevent this outflow of gold while our currency is thus depreciated. During these years, also, our merchant marine steadily decreased, and our ship-building interests were nearly ruined.

“Our tonnage engaged in foreign trade, which amounted in 1859–’60 to more than two and a-half million tons, had fallen in 1865–’66 to less than one and a-half millions—a decrease of more than fifty per cent.; and prices of labor and material are still too high to enable our shipwrights to compete with foreign builders.

“From the facts already exhibited in reference to our industrial revolution, and from the foregoing analysis of the nature and functions of currency, it is manifest:

“1. That the remarkable prosperity of all industrial enterprises during the war was not caused by the abundance of currency, but by the unparalleled demand for every product of labor.

“2. That the great depression of business, the stagnation of trade, the ‘hard times’ which have prevailed during the past year, and which still prevail, have not been caused by an insufficient amount of currency, but mainly by the great falling off of the demand for all the products of labor, compared with the increased supply since the return from war to peace.

“I subjoin a table, carefully made up from the official records, showing the amount of paper money in the United States at the beginning of each year from 1834 to 1868 inclusive. The fractions of millions are omitted:

1834 $ 95,000,000 1835 104,000,000 1836 140,000,000 1837 149,000,000 1838 116,000,000 1839 135,000,000 1840 107,000,000 1841 107,000,000 1842 84,000,000 1843 59,000,000 1844 75,000,000 1845 90,000,000 1846 105,000,000 1847 106,000,000 1848 129,000,000 1849 115,000,000 1850 131,000,000 1851 155,000,000 1852 150,000,000 1853 146,000,000 1854 205,000,000 1855 187,000,000 1856 196,000,000 1857 215,000,000 1858 135,000,000 1859 193,000,000 1860 207,000,000 1861 202,000,000 1862 218,000,000 1863 529,000,000 1864 636,000,000 1865 948,000,000 1866 919,000,000 1867 852,000,000 1868 767,000,000

“The table I have submitted shows how perfect an index the currency is of the healthy or unhealthy condition of business, and that every great financial crisis, during the period covered by the table, has been preceded by a great increase, and followed by a great and sudden decrease, in the volume of paper money. The rise and fall of mercury in the barometer is not more surely indicative of an atmospheric storm, than is a sudden increase or decrease of currency indicative of financial disaster. Within the period covered by the table, there were four great financial and commercial crises in this country. They occurred in 1837, 1841, 1854, and 1857. Observe the volume of paper currency for those years: On the first day of January, 1837, the amount had risen to $149,000,000, an increase of nearly fifty per cent. in three years. Before the end of that year, the reckless expansion, speculation, and over-trading which caused the increase, had resulted in terrible collapse; and on the first of January, 1838, the volume was reduced to $116,000,000. Wild lands, which speculation had raised to fifteen and twenty dollars per acre, fell to one dollar and a-half and two dollars, accompanied by a corresponding depression in all branches of business. Immediately after the crisis of 1841, the bank circulation decreased twenty-five per cent., and by the end of 1842 was reduced to $58,500,000, a decrease of nearly fifty per cent.

“At the beginning of 1853 the amount was $146,000,000. Speculation and expansion had swelled it to $205,000,000 by the end of that year, and thus introduced the crash of 1854. At the beginning of 1857 the paper money of the country reached its highest point of inflation up to that time. There were nearly $215,000,000, but at the end of that disastrous year the volume had fallen to $135,000,000, a decrease of nearly forty per cent. in less than twelve months. In the great crashes preceding 1837 the same conditions are invariably seen—great expansion, followed by a violent collapse, not only in paper money, but in loans and discounts; and those manifestations have always been accompanied by a corresponding fluctuation in prices.

“In the great crash of 1819, one of the severest this country ever suffered, there was a complete prostration of business. It is recorded in Niles’s Register for 1820 that, in that year, an Ohio miller sold four barrels of flour to raise five dollars, the amount of his subscription to that paper. Wheat was twenty cents per bushel, and corn ten cents. About the same time Mr. Jefferson wrote to Nathaniel Macon:

“‘We have now no standard of value. I am asked eighteen dollars for a yard of broadcloth which, when we had dollars, I used to get for eighteen shillings.’

“But there is one quality of such a currency more remarkable than all others—its strange power to delude men. The spells and enchantments of legendary witchcraft were hardly so wonderful. Most delusions can not be repeated; they lose their power after a full exposure. Not so with irredeemable paper money. From the days of John Law its history has been a repetition of the same story, with only this difference: No nation now resorts to its use except from overwhelming necessity; but whenever any nation is fairly embarked, it floats on the delusive waves, and, like the lotus-eating companions of Ulysses, wishes to return no more.

“Into this very delusion many of our fellow-citizens and many members of this House have fallen.

“The chief cause of this new-born zeal for paper money is the same as that which led a member of the Continental Congress to exclaim:

“‘Do you think, gentlemen, that I will consent to load my constituents with taxes, when we can send to the printer and get a wagon-load of money, one quire of which will pay for the whole?’

“It is my clear conviction that the most formidable danger with which the country is now threatened is a large increase in the volume of paper money.

“Shall we learn nothing from experience? Shall the warnings of the past be unheeded?”

Here followed a brilliant historical review of the experience of the Colonies, of the Continental Congress, and of England, with paper money.

“From these considerations it appears to me that the first step toward a settlement of our financial and industrial affairs should be to adopt and declare to the country a fixed and definite policy, so that industry and enterprise may be based upon confidence; so that men may know what to expect from the Government; and, above all, that the course of business may be so adjusted that it shall be governed by the laws of trade, and not by the caprice of any man or of any political party in or out of Congress....

“On the 10th of February, I introduced a bill which, if it should become a law, will, I believe, go far toward restoring confidence and giving stability to business, and will lay the foundation on which a general financial policy may be based, whenever opinions are so harmonized as to make a general policy possible.

“As the bill is short, I will quote it entire, and call attention for a few moments to its provisions:

“‘A BILL TO PROVIDE FOR A GRADUAL RETURN TO SPECIE PAYMENTS.

“‘Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled: That on and after the first day of December, 1868, the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to pay gold coin of the United States for any legal-tender notes of the United States, which may be presented at the office of the Assistant Treasurer, at New York, at the rate of one dollar in gold for one dollar and thirty cents in legal-tender notes. On and after the first day of January, 1869, the rate shall be one dollar in gold for one dollar and twenty-nine cents in legal-tender notes; and at the beginning of and during each succeeding month, the amount of legal-tender notes required in exchange for one dollar in gold shall be one cent less than the amount required during the preceding month, until the exchange becomes one dollar in gold for one dollar in legal-tender notes; and on and after the first day of June, 1871, the Secretary of the Treasury shall exchange gold for legal-tender notes, dollar for dollar. Provided: That nothing in this act shall be so construed as to authorize the retirement or cancellation of any legal-tender notes of the United States.’

* * * * *

“I do not doubt that, in anticipation of the operation of this measure, should it become a law, gold would be at 130, or lower, by the 1st of December, and that very little would be asked for from the Treasury, in exchange for currency. At the beginning of each succeeding month the exchange between gold and greenbacks would be reduced one cent, and specie payments would be fully resumed in June, 1871. That the country is fully able to resume by that time will hardly be denied.

“With the $100,000,000 of gold now in the Treasury, and the amount received from customs, which averages nearly half a million per day, it is not at all probable that we should need to borrow a dollar in order to carry out the provisions of the law.

“But taking the most unfavorable aspect of the case, and supposing that the Government should find it necessary to authorize a gold loan, the expense would be trifling compared with the resulting benefits to the country. The proposed measure would incidentally bring all the national banks to the aid of the Government in the work of resumption. The banks are required by law to redeem their own notes in greenbacks. They now hold in their vaults, as a reserve required by law, $162,000,000, of which sum $114,000,000 are greenbacks. Being compelled to pay the same price for their own notes as for greenbacks, they would gradually accumulate a specie reserve, and would be compelled to keep abreast with the Government in every step of the progress toward resumption. The necessity of redeeming their own notes would keep their circulation nearer home, and would more equally distribute the currency of the country which now concentrates at the great money centers, and produces scarcity in the rural districts.

“This measure would not at once restore the old national standard of value, but it would give stability to business and confidence to business men every-where. Every man who contracts a debt would know what the value of a dollar would be when the debt became due. The opportunity now afforded to Wall Street gamblers to run up and run down the relative price of gold and greenbacks would be removed. The element of chance, which now vitiates our whole industrial system, would, in great part, be eliminated.

“If this measure be adopted it will incidentally settle several of our most troublesome questions. It will end the war between the contractionists and the inflationists—a war which, like that of Marius and Sylla, may almost prove fatal to the interests of the country, whichever side may prevail. The amount of paper money will regulate itself, and may be unlimited, so long as every dollar is convertible into specie at the will of the holder.

“The still more difficult question of paying our five-twenty bonds would be avoided—completely flanked by this measure. The money paid to the wounded soldier, and to the soldier’s widow, would soon be made equal in value to the money paid to all other creditors of the Government.

“It will be observed that the bill does not authorize the cancellation or retirement of any United States notes. It is believed that, for a time at least, the volume of the currency may safely remain as it now is. When the measure has been in force for some time, it will be seen whether the increased use of specie for purposes of circulation will not allow a gradual reduction of the legal-tender notes. This can be safely left to subsequent legislation. It will facilitate the success of this plan if Congress will pass a bill to legalize contracts hereafter made for the payment of coin. If this be done, many business men will conduct their affairs on a specie basis, and thus retain at home much of our gold that now goes abroad.

ENGLISH PRECEDENT.

“I have not been ambitious to add another to the many financial plans proposed to this Congress, much less have I sought to introduce a new and untried scheme. On the contrary, I regard it a strong commendation of this measure, that it is substantially the same as that by which Great Britain resumed specie payments, after a suspension of nearly a quarter of a century.

“The situation of England at that time was strikingly similar to our present situation. She had just emerged from a great war in which her resources had been taxed to the utmost. Business had been expanded, and high prices prevailed. Paper money had been issued in unusual volume, was virtually a legal-tender, and had depreciated to the extent of twenty-five per cent. Every financial evil from which we now suffer prevailed there, and was aggravated by having been longer in operation. Plans and theories without end were proposed to meet the many difficulties of the case. For ten years the Bank of England and the majority in Parliament vehemently denied that paper money had depreciated, notwithstanding the unanswerable report of the Bullion Committee of 1810, and the undeniable fact that it took twenty-five per cent. more of notes than of coin to buy an ounce of gold.

“Many insisted that paper was a better standard of value than coin. Some denounced the attempt to return to specie as unwise, others as impossible. William Cobbett, the famous pamphleteer, announced that he would give himself up to be broiled on a gridiron whenever the bank should resume cash payments; and for many years kept the picture of a gridiron at the head of his Political Register, to remind his readers of his prophecy. Every phase of the question was discussed by the best minds of the kingdom, in and out of Parliament, for more than ten years; and in May, 1819, under the lead of Robert Peel, a law was passed fixing the time and mode of resumption.

“It provided that on the 1st of February, 1820, the bank should give, in exchange for its notes, gold bullion in quantities not less than sixty ounces, at the rate of 81s. per ounce; that, from the 1st of October, 1820, the rates should be 79s. 6d.; from the 1st of May, 1822, 79s. 10½d.; and on the 1st of May, 1823, the bank should redeem all its notes in coin, whatever the amount presented. The passage of the act gave once more a fixed and certain value to money; and business so soon adjusted itself to the measure in anticipation, that specie payments were fully resumed on the 1st of May, 1821, two years before the time fixed by the law. Forty-seven years have elapsed since then, and the verdict of history has approved the wisdom of the act, notwithstanding the clamor and outcry which at first assailed it. So plainly does this lesson apply to us, that in the preface to one of the best histories of England, recently published, the author, who is an earnest friend of the United States, says:

“‘It seems to me that no thoughtful citizen of any nation can read the story of the years before and after Peel’s bill of 1819, extending over the crash of 1825–’26, without the strongest desire that such risks and calamities may be avoided in his own country at any sacrifice. There are several countries under the doom of retribution for the license of an inconvertible paper currency, and of these the United States are unhappily one. This passage of English history may possibly help to check the levity with which the inevitable ‘crash’ is spoken of by some, who little dream what the horrors and griefs of such a convulsion are. It may do more if it should show any considerable number of observers that the affairs of the economic world are as truly and certainly under the control of natural laws as the world of matter without and that of mind within.’”

* * * * *

This speech is remarkable. It is wonderful. Had that resumption bill become a law, it is possible and probable that the panic of 1873, and the long years of distress might have been, if not avoided, at least greatly shortened and alleviated. The argument never was and never could be improved upon by any one. In the light of history that speech was a prophecy. Congress procrastinated a return to specie payment. Finally the crash came, as he had foretold. Garfield once said, “After the battle of arms comes the battle of history.” In writing a historical estimate of the leaders of the epoch which closed with the consummation of specie payments, the critical historian would rightly claim that this speech of General Garfield, in the spring of 1868, five and a-half years before the panic, must take rank as a triumph of statesmanship above every argument, no matter how able or eloquent, made after the panic. In this speech Garfield showed his conservatism again in favoring the continuation of greenbacks in circulation, the very thing which was done over the bitter opposition of resumptionists seven years before.

In the earlier part of the speech he showed the necessity of an adjustable volume of currency. With specie this was easy. With paper currency the volume could be made adjustable through banks. They were the institutions to ease us through the straits to resumption. Their mission was more fully elaborated in a speech of June 7, 1870. The West and South having an insufficient number of banks, and, consequently, lacking the currency of checks, drafts, etc., were suffering. To meet this, he presented a bill redistributing the banks. His views are what most concern us.

CURRENCY AND THE BANKS.

“I wish first to state a few general propositions touching the subjects of trade and its instruments. A few simple principles form the foundation on which rests the whole superstructure of money, currency, and trade. They may be thus briefly stated:

“First. Money, which is a universal measure of value and a medium of exchange, must not be confounded with credit currency in any of its forms. Nothing is really money which does not of itself possess the full amount of the value which it professes on its face to possess. Length can only be measured by a standard which in itself possesses length. Weight can only be measured by a standard, defined and recognized, which in itself possesses weight. So, also, value can only be measured by that which in itself possesses a definite and known value. The precious metals, coined and stamped, form the money of the world, because when thrown into the melting-pot and cast into bars they will sell in the market as metal for the same amount that they will pass for in the market as coined money. The coining and stamping are but a certification by the government of the quantity and fineness of the metal stamped. The coining certifies to the value, but neither creates it nor adds to it.

“Second. Paper currency, when convertible at the will of the holder into coin, though not in itself money, is a title to the amount of money promised on its face; and so long as there is perfect confidence that it is a good title for its whole amount, it can be used as money in the payment of debts. Being lighter and more easily carried, it is for many purposes more convenient than money, and has become an indispensable substitute for money throughout all civilized countries. One quality which it must possess, and without which it loses its title to be called money, is that the promise written on its face must be good and be kept good. The declaration on its face must be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If the promise has no value, the note itself is worthless. If the promise affords any opportunity for doubt, uncertainty, or delay, the note represents a vague uncertainty, and is measured only by remaining faith in the final redemption of the promise.

“Third. Certificates of credit under whatever form, are among the most efficient instruments of trade. The most common form of these certificates is that of a check or draft. The bank is the institution through which the check becomes so powerful an instrument of exchange. The check is comparatively a modern invention, whose functions and importance are not yet fully recognized. It may represent a deposit of coin or of paper currency, convertible or inconvertible; or may, as is more frequently the case, represent merely a credit, secured by property in some form, but not by money. The check is not money; yet, for the time being, it performs all the functions of money in the payment of debts. No greater mistake can be made than to suppose that the effective value of currency is not directly increased by the whole amount of checks in circulation.

“I would not for a moment lose sight of the great first necessity of all exchanges, that they be measured by real money, the recognized money of the world; nor of that other necessity next in importance, that bank notes or treasury notes should represent real money; should be of uniform value throughout the country, and should be sufficient in amount to effect all those exchanges in which paper money is actually used. I would keep constantly in view both these important factors. But that is a superficial and incomplete plan of legislation which does not include, in its provisions for the safe and prompt transaction of business, those facilities which modern civilization has devised, and which have so largely superseded the use of both coin and paper money.

“The bank has become the indispensable agent and instrument of trade throughout the civilized world, and not less in specie paying countries than in countries cursed by an inconvertible paper currency. Besides its function of issuing circulating notes, it serves as a clearing-house for the transactions of its customers. It brings the buyer and seller together, and enables them to complete their exchanges. It brings debtors and creditors together, and enables them to adjust their accounts. It collects the thousand little hoards of unemployed money, and through loans and discounts converts them into active capital. It is a reservoir which collects in amounts available for use, the rain-drops which would otherwise be lost by dispersion.

“I find there are still those who deny the doctrine that bank deposits form an effective addition to the circulation. But let us see. A bank is established at a point thirty or forty miles distant from any other bank. Every man within that circle has been accustomed is keep in his pocket or safe a considerable sum of money during the year. That average amount is virtually withdrawn from circulation, and for the time being is canceled, is dead. After a new bank is established, a large portion of that average amount is deposited with the bank, and a smaller amount is carried in their safes and pockets. These accumulated deposits placed in the bank, at once constitute a fund which can be loaned to those who need credit. At least four-fifths of the average amount of deposits can be loaned out, thus converting dead capital into active circulation.

“But the word deposits covers far more than the sums of actual money placed in the bank by depositors. McLeod, in his great work on banking, says: ‘Credits standing in bankers’ books, from whatever source, are called deposits. Hence a deposit in banking language always means a credit in a banker’s books in exchange for money or securities for money,’—Vol. ii, p. 267.

“Much the largest proportion of all bank deposits are of this class—mere credits on the books of the bank. Outside the bank, these deposits are represented by checks and drafts. Inside the bank, they effect settlements, and make thousands of payments by mere transfer from one man’s account to that of another. This checking and counter-checking and transferring of credit, amounts to a sum vastly greater than all the deposits. No stronger illustration of the practical use of deposits can be found than in the curious fact, that all the heavy payments made by the merchants and dealers in the city of Amsterdam for half a century, were made through a supposed deposit which had entirely disappeared some fifty years before its removal was detected. Who does not know that the six hundred millions of dollars of deposits reported every quarter as a part of the liabilities of the national banks, are mainly credits which the banks have given to business men?

“No currency can meet the wants of this country unless it is founded directly upon the demands of business, and not upon the caprice, the ignorance, the political selfishness, of any party in power.

“What regulates now the loans and discounts and credits of our National banks? The business of the country. The amount increases or decreases, or remains stationary, as business is fluctuating or steady. This is a natural form of exchange, based upon the business of the country and regarded by its changes. And when that happy day arrives, when the whole volume of our currency is redeemable in gold at the will of the holder, and recognized by all nations as equal to money, then the whole business of banking, the whole volume of currency, the whole amount of credits, whether in the form of checks, drafts, or bills, will be regulated by the same general law—the business of the country.”

At last, Congress came up to the position taken by Garfield in 1868. In 1875, the Resumption Act was passed, providing that, after January 1, 1879, the United States Treasury would offer one dollar in gold for every dollar in greenbacks presented for redemption. That this law was ten years too late can not be doubted. The delay prolonged the agony. But it was all that popular opinion would allow. In the interim between 1875 and 1879, every effort was made by the paper-money men to repeal the act. Of General Garfield’s speeches in its defense, we select that of November 16, 1877, as the type. The reader shall see whether he had changed his views, whether the panic and hard times had disconcerted his calculations? Let James A. Garfield speak for himself:

THE REPEAL OF THE RESUMPTION ACT.

“We are engaged in a debate which has lasted in the Anglo-Saxon world for more than two centuries, and hardly any phase of it to which we have listened in the course of the last week is new. Hardly a proposition has been heard on either side which was not made one hundred and eighty years ago in England, and almost a hundred years ago in the United States. So singularly does history repeat itself.

“That man makes a vital mistake who judges of truth in relation to financial affairs from the changing phases of public opinion. He might as well stand on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, and, from the ebb and flow of a single tide, attempt to determine the general level of the sea, as to stand on this floor and from the current of public opinion in any one debate, judge of the general level of the public mind. It is only when long spaces along the shore of the sea are taken into account, that the grand level is found, from which all heights and depths are measured. And it is only when long spaces of time are considered that we find at last the level of public opinion which we call the general judgment of mankind. From the turbulent ebb and flow of the public opinion of to-day I appeal to that settled judgment of mankind on the subject-matter of this debate.

“In the short time which is allotted to me I invite the attention of gentlemen, who do me the honor to listen, to a very remarkable fact. I suppose it will be admitted on all hands, that 1860 was a year of unusual business prosperity in the United States. It was at a time when the bounties of Providence were scattered with a liberal hand over the face of our Republic. It was a time when all classes of our community were well and profitably employed. It was a time of peace; the apprehension of our great civil war had not yet seized the minds of our people. Great crops North and South, great general prosperity marked the era.

“If one thing was settled above all other questions of financial policy in the American mind at that time, it was this, that the only sound, safe, trustworthy standard of value is coin of a standard weight and fineness, or a paper currency convertible into coin at the will of the holder. That was and had been for several generations the almost unanimous opinion of the American people. It is true there was here and there a theorist dreaming of the philosopher’s stone, dreaming of a time when paper money, which he worshiped as a kind of fetish, would be crowned as a god; but those dreamers were so few in number that they made no ripple on the current of public thought, and their theories formed no part of public opinion, and the opinion of 1860–’61 was the aggregated result of the opinions of all the foremost Americans who have left their record upon this subject.

“I make this statement without fear of contradiction, because I have carefully examined the list of illustrious names and the records they have left behind them. No man ever sat in the chair of Washington as President of the United States who has left on record any word that favors inconvertible paper money as a safe standard of value. Every President who has left a record on the subject has spoken without qualification in favor of the doctrine I have announced. No man ever sat in the chair of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States who, if he has spoken at all on the subject, has not left on record an opinion equally strong, from Hamilton down to the days of the distinguished father of my colleague [Mr. Ewing], and to the present moment.

“The general judgment of all men who deserve to be called the leaders of American thought ought to be considered worth something in an American House of Representatives on the discussion of a great topic like this. What happened to cause a departure from this general level of public opinion? Every man knows the history. War, the imperious necessities of war, led the men of 1861–’62 to depart from the doctrine of the fathers; but they did not depart from it as a matter of choice, but compelled by overmastering necessity. Every man in the Senate and House of 1862 who voted for the greenback law, announced that he did it with the greatest possible reluctance and with the gravest apprehension for the result. Every man who spoke on the subject, from Thaddeus Stevens to the humblest member in this House, and from Fessenden to the humblest Senator, warned his country against the danger that might follow, and pledged his honor that at the earliest possible moment the country should be brought back to the old, safe-established doctrine of the fathers.

“When they made the law creating the greenbacks they incorporated into its essential provisions the most solemn pledge men could devise, that they would come back to the doctrines of the fathers. The very law that created the greenback provided for its redemption and retirement; and every time the necessities of war required an additional issue, new guarantees and new limitations were put upon the new issues to insure their ultimate redemption. They were issued upon the fundamental condition that the number should be so limited forever that under the law of contracts the courts might enforce their sanctions. The men of 1862 knew the dangers from sad experience in our history; and, like Ulysses, lashed themselves to the mast of public credit when they embarked upon the stormy and boisterous sea of inflated paper money, that they might not be beguiled by the siren song which would be sung to them when they were afloat on the wild waves.

“But the times have changed; new men are on deck; men who have forgotten the old pledges; and now only twelve years have passed (for as late as 1865 this House, with but six dissenting votes, resolved again to stand by the old ways and bring the country back to sound money)—only twelve years have passed, and what do we find? We find a group of theorists and doctrinaires who look upon the wisdom of the fathers as foolishness. We find some who advocate what they call “absolute money;” who declare that a piece of paper stamped a “dollar” is a dollar; that gold and silver are a part of the barbarism of the past, which ought to be forever abandoned. We hear them declaring that resumption is a delusion and a snare. We here them declaring that the eras of prosperity are the eras of paper money; and they point us to all times of inflation as a period of blessing to the people, prosperity to business; and they ask us no more to vex their ears with any allusion to the old standard, the money of the Constitution. Let the wild crop of financial literature that has sprung into life within the last twelve years witness how widely and how far we have drifted. We have lost our old moorings, have thrown overboard our old compass; we sail by alien stars, looking not for the haven, but are afloat on an unknown sea....

“No theory of currency that existed in 1860 can justify the volume now outstanding. Either our laws of trade, our laws of value, our laws of exchange, have been utterly reversed or the currency of to-day is in excess of the legitimate wants of trade. But I admit freely that no Congress is wise enough to determine how much currency the country needs. There never was a body of men wise enough to do that. The volume of currency needed, depends upon laws that are higher than Congress and higher than governments. One thing only legislation can do. It can determine the quality of the money of the country. The laws of trade alone can determine its quantity.

“In connection with this view we are met by the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley] with two historical references on which he greatly relies in opposing resumption. The first is his reference to France. Follow France, says the honorable gentleman from Pennsylvania, follow France, and see how she poured out her volumes of paper money, and by it survived a great crisis and maintained her business prosperity. Oh, that the gentleman and those who vote with him would follow France! I gladly follow up his allusion to France. As a proof that we have not enough money, he notices the fact that France has always used more money than either the United States or England. I admit it. But does the gentleman not know that the traditions and habits of France are as unlike those of England and the United States as those of any two nations of the world can be in regard to the use of money? I say to the gentleman that in France, banking, as an instrument of trade, is almost unknown. There are no banks in France except the Bank of France itself. The government has been trying for twenty years to establish branches in all the eighty-nine departments, and thus far only fifty-six branches have been organized. Our national, State, and private banks number nearly ten thousand. The habits of the French people are not adapted to the use of banks as instruments of exchange. All the deposits in all the saving-banks of France are not equal to the deposits in the saving-banks of New York City alone. It is the frequent complaint of Americans who make purchases in Paris that the merchants will not accept drafts, even on the Bank of France.

“Victor Bonnet, a recent French writer, says: ‘The use of deposits, bank accounts, and checks, is still in its infancy in this country. They are very little used even in great cities, while in the rest of France they are completely unknown. It is, however, to be hoped that there will be more employed hereafter, and that here, as in England and the United States, payments will be more generally made through the medium of bankers and by transfers in account-current. If this should be the case, we shall economize both in the use of specie and of bank-notes; for it is to be observed that the use of bank-notes does not reach its fullest development except in countries where the keeping of bank accounts is universal, as is evident by comparing France in this respect with England.’

“M. Pinard, manager of the Comptoir d’Escompte, testified before the commission of inquiry, that the greatest efforts had been made by that institution to induce French merchants and shopkeepers to adopt English habits in respect to the use of checks and the keeping of bank accounts, but in vain; their prejudices were invincible. ‘It was no use reasoning with them; they would not do it, because they would not.’

“So long as the business of their country is thus done hand to hand by the use of cash, they need a much greater volume of money in proportion to their business than England or the United States.

“How is it in England? Statistics, which no man will gainsay, will show that ninety-five per cent. of all the great mercantile transactions of England is done by drafts, checks, and commercial bills and only five per cent. by the actual use of cash. The great business of commerce and trade is done by drafts and bills. Money is now only the small change of commerce. And how is it in this country? We have adopted the habits of England, and not of France, in this regard. In 1871, when I was Chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency, I asked the Comptroller of the Currency to issue an order naming fifty-two banks which were to make an analysis of their receipts. I selected three groups: The first group were the city banks; not, however, the clearing-house banks, but the great city banks not in the clearing-house association. The second group consisted of banks in cities of the size of Toledo and Dayton, in the State of Ohio. In the third group, if I may coin a word, I selected the ‘countriest’ banks—the smallest that could be found at points away from railroads and telegraphs.

“The order was that all those banks should analyze all their receipts for six consecutive days, putting into one list all that can be called cash, either in coin, greenbacks, bank-notes, or coupons; and into the other list all drafts, checks, or commercial bills. What was the result? During those six days $157,000,000 were received over the counters of those fifty-two banks; and, of that amount, $19,370,000 was in cash—twelve per cent. only in cash; and eighty-eight per cent. of that vast amount, representing every grade of business, was in checks, drafts, and commercial bills. Does a country that transacts its business in that way need as much currency afloat among the people as a country like France, without banks, without savings institutions, and whose people keep their money in hoards.

“I remember in reading one of the novels of Dumas, when an officer of the French army sent home his agent to run his farm, he loaded him down with silver enough to conduct the business for a year; there was no thought of giving him credit in a bank; but of locking in the till, at the beginning of the year, enough coin to do the business of the year. So much for the difference between the habits of France and those of Anglo-Saxon countries. Let us now consider the conduct of France during and since the German war. In July, 1870, the year before the war began, the Bank of France had outstanding $251,000,000 of paper circulation, and held in its vaults $229,000,000 of coin. When the war broke out, they were compelled immediately to issue more paper, and to make it a legal tender. They took pattern by us in their necessity, and issued paper until, on the 19th of November, 1873, four years ago next Monday, they had $602,000,000 of paper issued by the Bank of France, while the coin in the bank was reduced to $146,000,000.

“But the moment their great war was over, they did what I recommended to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley], they commenced to reduce their paper circulation, and in one year reduced it almost $100,000,000, and increased the coin circulation $120,000,000. In the year 1876 they had pushed into circulation $200,000,000 of coin, and retired nearly all their small notes. They are at this moment within fifty days of resumption of specie payments. Under their law, fifty days from to-day, France will again come into the illustrious line of nations who believe in a sound currency. I commend to the eloquent gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Kelley] the example of France....

“The overwhelming and fixed opinion of England is that the cash-resumption act of 1819 was a blessing and not a curse, and that the evils which England suffered from 1821 to 1826 did not arise from the resumption of cash payments. I appeal to every great writer of acknowledged character in England for the truth of this position. I ask the gentleman to read the eighth chapter of the second book of Miss Martineau’s History of the Peace, where the case is admirably stated. I appeal also to the opinion of Parliament itself, especially to the House of Commons, which is as sensitive an index of public opinion as England knows. When they were within about eighteen months of resumption of specie payment, a motion was made, like the motion of my colleague from Ohio [Mr. Ewing], that the resumption-act bill be repealed or modified, because it was producing distress. And a number of gentlemen in the House of Commons made speeches of the same spirit as those which we have heard here within the past week. The distress among the people, the crippling of business, the alarm of the mercantile classes, all were paraded in the House of Commons, and were answered by those knights of finance whose names have become illustrious in English history. And at the end of a long debate on that proposition, on the 11th of April, 1821, a vote was taken, and the proposition was rejected by a vote of 141 to 27. In other words, by a vote of 141 to 27 the House of Commons resolved that their act for the resumption of specie payments was not causing distress, and ought not to be repealed, and ought not to be modified, except to make it more effective. As a matter of fact, it was so modified as to allow resumption to take place much sooner than was provided in the act of 1819....

“I now proceed to notice the second point that has been made in favor of this bill. It is assumed that specie payment will injure the debtor class of this country, and thereby oppress the poor; in other words, that the enforcement of the resumption law will oppress the poor and increase the riches of the rich. It is assumed that the laboring-men are in debt, and that the rich men constitute the creditor class. I deny this proposition in toto. I affirm that the vast majority of the creditors of this country are the poor people; that the vast majority of the debtors of this country are the well-to-do people—in fact, people who are moderately rich.

“As a matter of fact, the poor man, the laboring-man, can not get heavily in debt. He has not the security to offer. Men lend their money on security, and in the very nature of the case poor men can borrow but little. What then do poor men do with their small earnings? When a man has earned, out of his hard work, a hundred dollars more than he needs for current expenses, he reasons thus: ‘I can not go into business with a hundred dollars; I can not embark in trade; but, as I work, I want my money to work.’ And so he puts his small gains where they will earn something. He lends his money to a wealthier neighbor, or puts it in the savings-bank. There were, in the United States, on the first of November, 1876, forty-four hundred and seventy-five savings-banks and private banks of deposit, and their deposits amounted to $1,377,000,000, almost three-fourths of the amount of our national debt. Over two and a half millions of the citizens of the United States were depositors. In some States the deposits did not average more than $250 each. The great mass of the depositors are men and women of small means—laborers, widows, and orphans. They are the lenders of this enormous aggregate. The savings-banks, as their agents, lend it to whom? Not to the laboring poor, but to the business men who wish to enlarge their business beyond their capital. Speculators sometimes borrow it. But in the main, well-to-do business men borrow these hoardings. Thus the poor lend to the rich....

“There is another way in which poor men dispose of their money. A man says: ‘I can keep my wife and babies from starving while I live and have my health, but if I die they may be compelled to go over the hills to the poor-house’; and, agonized by that thought, he saves out of his hard earnings enough to take out and keep alive a small life-insurance policy, so that, if he dies, there may be something left, provided the insurance company to which he intrusts his money is honest enough to keep its pledges. And how many men do you think have done that in the United States? I do not know the number for the whole country, but I do know this, that from a late report to the insurance commissioner of the State of New York, it appears that the companies doing business in that State had 774,625 policies in force, and the face value of these policies was $1,922,000,000. I find, by looking over the returns, that in my State there are 55,000 policies outstanding; in Pennsylvania, 74,000; in Maine, 17,000; in Maryland, 25,000; and, in the State of New York, 160,090. There are, of course, some rich men insured in these companies, but the majority are poor people, for the policies do not average more than $2,200 each. What is done with the assets of these companies, which amount to $445,000,000? They are loaned out. Here again the creditor class is the poor, and the insurance companies are the agents of the poor to lend their money for them. It would be dishonorable for Congress to legislate either for the debtor class or for the creditor class alone. We ought to legislate for the whole country. But when gentlemen attempt to manufacture sentiment against the resumption act, by saying it will help the rich and hurt the poor, they are overwhelmingly answered by the facts.

“Suppose you undo the work that Congress has attempted—to resume specie payment—what will result? You will depreciate the value of the greenback. Suppose it falls ten cents on the dollar, you will have destroyed ten per cent. of the value of every deposit in the savings-banks, ten per cent. of every life-insurance policy and fire-insurance policy, of every pension to the soldier, and of every day’s wages of every laborer in the nation.

“In the census of 1870, it was estimated that on any given day there were $120,000,000 due to laborers for their unpaid wages. That is a small estimate. Let the greenback dollar come down ten per cent. and you take $12,000,000 from the men who have already earned it. In the name of every interest connected with the poor man I denounce this effort to prevent resumption. Daniel Webster never uttered a greater truth in finance than when he said that of all contrivances to cheat the laboring-classes of mankind, none was so effective as that which deluded them with an irredeemable paper money. The rich can take care of themselves, but the dead-weight of all the fluctuations and losses falls ultimately on the poor man who has only his day’s work to sell.

“I admit that in the passage from peace to war there was a great loss to one class of the community, to the creditors; and in the return to the basis of peace some loss to debtors was inevitable. This injustice was unavoidable. The loss and gain did not fall upon the same. The evil could not be balanced nor adjusted. The debtors of 1862–’65 are not the debtors of 1877. The most competent judges declare that the average life of the private debts in the United States is not more than two years. Of course, obligations may be renewed, but the average length of private debts in this country is not more than two years. Now, we have already gone two years on the road to resumption, and the country has been adjusting itself to the new condition of things. The people have expected resumption, and have already discounted most of the hardships and sufferings incident to the change. The agony is almost over; and if we now embark again upon the open sea we lose all that has been gained, and plunge the country into the necessity of venturing once more over the same boisterous ocean, with all its perils and uncertainties. I speak the deepest convictions of my mind and heart when I say that, should this resumption act be repealed and no effectual substitute be put in its place, the day is not far distant when all of us, looking back on this time from the depths of the evils which will result, will regret, with all our power to regret, the day when we again let loose the dangers of inflation upon the country.

* * * * *

“Although I do not believe in keeping greenbacks as a permanent currency in the United States, although I do not myself believe in the Government becoming a permanent banker, yet I am willing for one that, in order to prevent the shock to business which gentlemen fear, the $300,000,000 of greenbacks shall be allowed to remain in circulation as long as the wants of trade show manifestly that they are needed. Now, is that a great contraction? Is it contraction at all?

“Why, gentlemen, when you have brought your greenback up two and one-half cents higher in value, you will have added to your volume of money $200,000,000 of gold coin which can not circulate until greenbacks are brought to par.

“Let those who are afraid of contraction consider that and answer it.

“Summing it all up in a word: the struggle now pending in the House is on the one hand to make the greenback better, and on the other to make it worse. The resumption act is making it better every day. Repeal that act and you make it infinitely worse. In the name of every man who wants his own when he has earned it, I demand that we do not make the wages of the poor man to shrivel in his hands after he has earned it; but that his money shall be made better and better, until the plow-holder’s money shall be as good as the bond-holder’s money; until our standard is one, and there is no longer one money for the rich and another for the poor.”

With these bits of marble chipped from the temple of his arguments on the currency question, we must content ourselves. Upon this question Garfield was undoubtedly ahead of his generation. The resumption bill which he introduced in 1868 was better than the one adopted in 1875. He presented the fundamental principles as he understood them in 1868. From them he never changed. All subsequent efforts were but their elaboration, and, at this writing, history itself is their fulfillment and demonstration.

It is easy to see that his style of speaking changed somewhat. He became more terse and epigrammatic. He condensed the philosophical parts of his speeches, and enlarged the practical parts. He became more direct in address, more sparing of ornament, and simpler in language. But this was all. He was never known to be on but one side of a question. He took his position only after the most laborious investigations and careful thought. Once taken, nothing could drive him from it. In his answers to the riddles propounded by the Sphinx of American currency and finance, James A. Garfield is entitled to a place in the gallery of fame, beside the greatest financiers known to our national history. In the future, no authority will be, or can be, higher than Garfield.

Our next inquiry relates to Garfield’s record upon questions affecting THE REVENUE AND EXPENDITURES OF THE UNITED STATES. Owing to his long service on the Committees of Ways and Means and on Appropriations, these twin topics of surpassing importance continually lay like couchant lions right in his political pathway.

Of the question of revenue, the tariff is the most vital branch. On the subjects of free-trade and protection, Garfield had made up his mind while at Williams College. Professor Perry, the instructor in political economy, was an unqualified free-trader. After his usual careful investigation, Garfield took the opposite view. He formulated the following proposition: “As an abstract theory, the doctrine of Free-Trade seems to be universally true, but as a question of practicability, under a government like ours, the protective system seems to be indispensable.”

Into the defense of that proposition he threw all his energies. In his speeches on the tariff we will find but one continual elaboration of this view. The speeches are moderate and conservative, avoiding either extreme. His object was to legislate for the whole country and not for any locality or class alone. On April 1, 1870, he delivered a speech on the tariff, which is of the first rank among his earlier efforts.

It presents an interesting history of England’s tariff policy toward the colonies, a brilliant discussion of the trend of prices since the war, and closes with a review of the eventful history of tariff legislation in this country, not omitting the South Carolina nullification. The high tariffs required by the high prices prevailing during the war, he thought, should be gradually reduced. Every one knows that the advantage of a high tariff on imports is the protection it gives to American industry by keeping up the prices here, and preventing competition with the cheap labor of Europe. But it is equally true that, while keeping prices up is good for the seller, and indirectly for the laborer whom he employs, it is bad for the buyer. Free-trade makes low prices. Avoiding alike the Scylla on the one hand and the Charybdis on the other, Garfield chose a medium. He closed his speech of April 1, 1870, by an appeal against either extreme:

“I stand now where I have always stood since I have been a member of this House. I take the liberty of quoting, from the Congressional Globe of 1866, the following remarks which I then made on the subject of the tariff:

“‘We have seen that one extreme school of economists would place the price of all manufactured articles in the hands of foreign producers by rendering it impossible for our manufacturers to compete with them; while the other extreme school, by making it impossible for the foreigner to sell his competing wares in our market, would give the people no immediate check upon the prices which our manufacturers might fix for their products. I disagree with both these extremes. I hold that a properly adjusted competition between home and foreign products is the best gauge by which to regulate international trade. Duties should be so high that our manufacturers can fairly compete with the foreign product, but not so high as to enable them to drive out the foreign article, enjoy a monopoly of the trade, and regulate the price as they please. This is my doctrine of protection. If Congress pursue this line of policy steadily, we shall, year by year, approach more nearly to the basis of free-trade, because we shall be more nearly able to compete with other nations on equal terms. I am for that protection which leads to ultimate free-trade. I am for that free-trade which can only be achieved through a reasonable protection.’”

As the representative of General Garfield’s tariff speeches in these pages, we select the one of February 4, 1878. Of this speech a gentleman of high abilities and information, says: “Having read and re-read it carefully, and having read all the great speeches made in Congress for forty years before the war on this difficult question, it is my deliberate conviction that the sound American doctrine of protection has never been stated with equal clearness, breadth, and practicality.”

THE TARIFF.

“A few days ago, the distinguished gentleman from Virginia, who now occupies the chair [Mr. Tucker], made a speech of rare ability and power, in which he placed at the front of his line of discussion a question that was never raised in American legislation until our present form of Government was forty years old; the question of the constitutionality of a tariff for the encouragement and protection of manufacturers. The first page of the printed speech of the gentleman, as it appears in the Congressional Record, is devoted to an elaborate and very able discussion of that question.

“He insists that the two powers conferred upon Congress, to levy duties and to regulate commerce, are entirely distinct from each other; that the one can not by any fair construction be applied to the other; that the methods of the one are not the methods of the other, and that the capital mistake which he conceives has been made in the legislation of the country for many years is that the power to tax has been applied to the regulation of commerce, and through that to the protection of manufactures. He holds that if we were to adopt a proper construction of the Constitution we should find that the regulation of commerce does not permit the protection of manufactures, nor can the power to tax be applied, directly or indirectly, to that object.

“I will not enter into any elaborate discussion of that question, but I can not refrain from expressing my admiration of the courage of the gentleman from Virginia, who in that part of his speech brought himself into point-blank range of the terrible artillery of James Madison, one of the fathers of the Constitution, and Virginia’s great expounder of its provisions.

“In a letter addressed to Joseph C. Cabell, on the 18th of March, 1827, will be found one of those discussions in which Mr. Madison gives categorically thirteen reasons against the very constitutional theory advanced now by the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker]. It would almost seem that the distinguished author of the book which I hold in my hand had prophetically in his mind the very speech delivered in this House by the later Virginian, for he refutes its arguments, point by point, thoroughly and completely.

“I say that more than a hundred pages of Madison’s works are devoted to discussing and exploding what was, in 1828, this new notion of constitutional construction. In one of these papers he calls to mind the fact that sixteen of the men who framed the Constitution sat in the first Congress and helped to frame a tariff expressly for the protection of domestic industries; and it is fair to presume that these men understood the meaning of the Constitution.

“I will close this phase of the discussion by calling the attention of the committee to the language of the Constitution itself:

“‘The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.’

“Language could hardly be plainer to declare the great general objects to which the taxing power is to be applied.

“It should be borne in mind that revenue is the life-blood of a government, circulating through every part of its organization and giving force and vitality to every function. The power to tax is therefore the great motive power, and its regulation impels, retards, restrains, or limits all the functions of the Government.

“What are these functions? The Constitution authorizes Congress to regulate and control this great motive power, the power to levy and collect duties; and the objects for which duties are to be levied and collected are summarized in three great groups: First, ‘to pay debts.’ By this, the arm of the Government sweeps over all its past history and protects its honor by discharging all obligations that have come down from former years. Second, is ‘to provide for the common defense.’ By this, the mailed arm of the Government sweeps the great circle of the Union to defend it against foes from without and insurrection within. And, third, is to ‘promote the general welfare.’ These are the three great objects to which the Constitution applies the power of taxation. They are all great, beneficent, national objects, and can not be argued out of existence.

“The fifteen specifications following in the eighth section of the same article—such as the power to raise armies, to maintain a navy, to establish courts, to coin money, to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States, to promote science and the useful arts by granting patents and copyrights—are all specifications and limitations of the methods by which this great central power of taxation is to be applied to the common defense and the general welfare. And it is left to the discretion of Congress to determine how these objects shall be secured by the use of the powers thus conferred upon it.

“The men who created this Constitution also set it in operation, and developed their own idea of its character. That idea was unlike any other that then prevailed upon the earth. They made the general welfare of the people the great source and foundation of the common defense. In all the nations of the Old World the public defense was provided for by great standing armies, navies, and fortified posts, so that the nation might every moment be fully armed against danger from without or turbulence within. Our fathers said: ‘Though we will use the taxing power to maintain a small army and navy sufficient to keep alive the knowledge of war, yet the main reliance for our defense shall be the intelligence, culture, and skill of our people; a development of our own intellectual and material resources, which will enable us to do every thing that may be necessary to equip, clothe, and feed ourselves in time of war, and make ourselves intelligent, happy, and prosperous in peace.’

“To lay the foundation for the realization of these objects was a leading motive which led to the formation of the Constitution, and was the earliest and greatest object of solicitude in the First Congress.

“Two days after the votes for president were counted, and long before Washington was inaugurated, James Madison rose in the first House of Representatives, and for the first time moved to go into the Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, for the express purpose of carrying out the theory of the Constitution to provide for the common defense and the general welfare, both by regulating commerce and protecting American manufactures. Thus, on the 8th of April, 1789, he opened a debate which lasted several weeks, in which was substantially developed every idea that has since appeared save one, the notion that it was unconstitutional to protect American industry. All other phases of the subject were fully and thoroughly handled in that great debate.

“Our fathers had been disciplined in the severe school of experience during the long period of colonial dependence. The heavy hand of British repression was laid upon all their attempts to become a self-supporting people. The navigation laws and commercial regulations of the mother country were based upon the theory that the colonies were founded for the sole purpose of raising up customers for her trade. They were allowed to purchase in British markets alone any manufactured article which England had to sell. In short, they were compelled to trade with England on her own terms; and whether buying or selling, the product must be carried in British bottoms at the carrier’s own price. In addition to this, a revenue tax of 5 per cent. was imposed on all colonial exports and imports.

“The colonists were doomed to the servitude of furnishing, by the simplest forms of labor, raw materials for the mother country, who arrogated to herself the sole right to supply her colonies with the finished product. To our fathers, independence was emancipation from this servitude. They knew that civilization advanced from the hunting to the pastoral state, from the pastoral to the agricultural, which has such charms for the distinguished gentleman from Virginia. But they also knew that no merely agricultural people had ever been able to rise to a high civilization and to self-supporting independence. They determined, therefore, to make their emancipation complete by adding to agriculture the mechanic arts, which in their turn would carry agriculture and all other industries to a still higher development, and place our people in the front rank of civilized and self-supporting nations. This idea inspired the legislation of all the earlier Congresses. It found expression in the first tariff act of 1789; in the higher rates of the act of 1790; and in the still larger schedule and increased rates of the acts of 1797 and 1800.

“In 1806 the non-importation act forbade the importation of British manufactures of silk, cloth, nails, spikes, brass, tin, and many other articles; and the eight years of embargo witnessed a great growth in American manufactures. When the non-importation act was repealed in 1814, John C. Calhoun assured the country that Congress would not fail to provide other adequate means for promoting the development of our industries; and, under his lead, the protective tariff of 1816 was enacted.

“I have given this brief historical sketch for the purpose of exhibiting the ideas out of which the tariff legislation of this country has sprung. It has received the support of the most renowned names in our early history; and, though the principle of protection has sometimes been carried to an unreasonable extreme, thus bringing reproach upon the system, it has nevertheless borne many of the fruits which were anticipated by those who planted the germ.

“Gentlemen who oppose this view of public policy tell us that they favor a tariff for revenue alone. I therefore invite their attention to the revenue phase of the question. The estimated expenditures for the next fiscal year are two hundred and eighty and one-half million dollars, including interest on the public debt and the appropriations required by law for the sinking fund. The Secretary of the Treasury estimates the revenues which our present laws will furnish at $269,000,000; from customs, one hundred and thirty-three millions; from internal revenue, one hundred and twenty millions; and from miscellaneous sources, sixteen millions. He tells us that it will be necessary to cut down the expenditures eleven millions below the estimates in order to prevent a deficit of that amount. The revenues of the last fiscal year failed by three and a quarter millions to meet the expenditures required by law.

“In the face of these facts can we safely diminish our revenues? If we mean to preserve the public faith and meet all the necessities of the Government we can not reduce the present revenues a single dollar. Yet the majority of this House not only propose to reduce the internal tax on spirits and tobacco but they propose in this bill to reduce the revenues on customs by at least $6,000,000. To avoid the disgrace of a deficit they propose to suspend the operations of the sinking fund and thereby shake the foundation of the public credit. But they tell us that some of the reductions made in this bill will increase rather than diminish the revenue. Perhaps on a few articles this will be true; but as a whole it is undeniable that this bill will effect a considerable reduction in the revenues from customs.

“Gentlemen on the other side have been in the habit of denouncing our present tariff laws as destructive to, rather than productive of, revenue. Let me invite their attention to a few plain facts:

“During the fifteen years that preceded our late war—a period of so-called revenue tariffs—we raised from customs an average annual revenue of forty-seven and a half million dollars, never in any year receiving more than sixty-four millions. That system brought us a heavy deficit in 1860, so that Congress was compelled to borrow money to meet the ordinary expenses of the Government.

“Do they tell us that our present law fails to produce an adequate revenue? They denounce it as not a revenue tariff. Let them wrestle with the following fact: During the eleven years that have passed since the close of the war we have averaged one hundred and seventy and one-half million dollars of revenue per annum from customs alone. Can they say that this is not a revenue tariff which produces more than three times as much revenue per annum as that law did which they delight to call ‘the revenue tariff?’ In one year, 1872, the revenues from the customs amounted to two hundred and twelve millions. Can they say that the present law does not produce revenue? It produces from textile fabrics alone more revenue than we ever raised from all sources under any tariff before the war. From this it follows that the assault upon the present law fails if made on the score of revenue alone.

“I freely admit that revenue is the primary object of taxation. That object is attained by existing law. But it is an incidental and vitally important object of the law to keep in healthy growth those industries which are necessary to the well-being of the whole country.

“Let us glance at the leading industries which, under the provisions of the existing law, are enabled to maintain themselves in the sharp struggle of competition with other countries. I will name them in five groups. In the first I place the textile fabrics, manufactures of cotton, wool, flax, hemp, jute, and silk. From these we received during the last fiscal year $50,000,000, which is more than one-third of all our customs revenue.

“It is said that a tax should not be levied upon the clothing of the people. This would be a valid objection were it not for the fact that objects of the highest national importance are secured by its imposition. That forty-five millions of people should be able to clothe themselves without helpless dependence upon other nations is a matter of transcendent importance to every citizen. What American can be indifferent to the fact that in the year 1875 the State of Massachusetts alone produced 992,000,000 yards of textile fabrics, and in doing so consumed seventy-five million dollars’ worth of the products of the fields and flocks, and gave employment to 120,000 artisans? There is a touch of pathos in the apologetic reply of Governor Spottswood, an early colonial Governor of Virginia, when he wrote to his British superiors:

“‘The people of Virginia, more of necessity than inclination, attempt to clothe themselves with their own manufactures.... It is certainly necessary to divert their application to some commodity less prejudicial to the trade of England.’—Bancroft’s History of the United States, vol. iv, page 104.

“Thanks to our independence, such apologies are no longer needed. Some of the rates on the textiles are exorbitant and ought to be reduced; but the general principle which pervades the group is wise and beneficent, not only as a means of raising revenue, but as a measure of national economy.

“In the second group I have placed the metals, including glass and chemicals. Though the tariff upon this group has been severely denounced in this debate, the rate does not average more than thirty-six per cent. ad valorem, and the group produced about $14,000,000 of revenue last year. Besides serving as a source of public revenue, what intelligent man fails to see that the metals are the basis of all the machinery, tools, and implements of every industry? More than any other in the world’s history, this is the age when inventive genius is bending all its energies to devise means to increase the effectiveness of human labor. The mechanical wonders displayed at our Centennial Exposition are a sufficient illustration.

“The people that can not make their own implements of industry must be content to take a very humble and subordinate place in the family of nations. The people that can not, at any time, by their own previous training, arm and equip themselves for war, must be content to exist by the sufferance of others.

“I do not say that no rates in this group are too high. Some of them can safely be reduced. But I do say these industries could not have attained their present success without the national care; and to abandon them now will prevent their continued prosperity.

“In the third group I place wines, spirits, and tobacco in its various forms which come from abroad. On these, rates of duty range from eighty-five to ninety-five per cent. ad valorem; and from them we collected last year $10,000,000 of revenue. The wisdom of this tax will hardly be disputed by any one.

“In the fourth group I have placed imported provisions which come in competition with the products of our own fields and herds, including breadstuffs, salt, rice, sugar, molasses, and spices. On these provisions imported into this country we collected last year a revenue of $42,000,000, $37,000,000 of which was collected on sugar. Of the duty on the principal article of this group I shall speak further on in the discussion.

“On the fifth group, comprising leather and manufactures of leather, we received about $3,000,000 of revenue.

“On the imports included in the five groups I have mentioned, which comprise the great manufacturing industries of the country, we collect $119,000,000—more than ninety per cent. of all our customs revenue. I ask if it be not an object of the highest national importance to keep alive and in vigorous health and growth the industries included in these groups? What sort of people should we be if we did not keep them alive? Suppose we were to follow the advice of the distinguished gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker] when he said:

“‘Why should me make pig-iron when with Berkshire pigs raised upon our farms we can buy more iron pigs from England than we can get by trying to make them ourselves? We can get more iron pigs from England for Berkshire pigs than we can from the Pennsylvania manufacturers. Why, then, should I not be permitted to send there for them?...

“‘What a market for our raw material, for our products, if we only would take the hand which Great Britain extends to us for free-trade between us!’

“For a single season, perhaps, his plan might be profitable to the consumers of iron; but if his policy were adopted as a permanent one, it would reduce us to a merely agricultural people, whose chief business would be to produce the simplest raw materials by the least skill and culture, and let the men of brains of other countries do our thinking for us, and provide for us all products requiring the cunning hand of the artisan, while we would be compelled to do the drudgery for ourselves and for them.

“The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Tucker] is too good a logician not to see that the theory he advocates can only be realized in a state of universal peace and brotherhood among the nations; and, in developing his plan, he says:

“‘Commerce, Mr. Chairman, links all mankind in one common brotherhood of mutual dependence and interests, and thus creates that unity of our race which makes the resources of all the property of each and every member. We can not if we would, and should not if we could, remain isolated and alone. Men under the benign influence of Christianity yearn for intercourse, for the interchange of thought and the products of thought as a means of a common progress toward a nobler civilization....

“‘Mr. Chairman, I can not believe this is according to the Divine plan. Christianity bids us seek, in communion with our brethren of every race and clime, the blessings they can afford us, and to bestow in return upon them those with which our new continent is destined to fill the world.’

“This, I admit, is a grand conception, a beautiful vision of the time when all the nations shall dwell in peace; when all will be, as it were, one nation, each furnishing to the others what they can not profitably produce, and all working harmoniously together in the millennium of peace. If all the kingdoms of the world should become the kingdom of the Prince of Peace, then I admit that universal free-trade ought to prevail. But that blessed era is yet too remote to be made the basis of the practical legislation of to-day. We are not yet members of the ‘parliament of man, the federation of the world.’ For the present, the world is divided into separate nationalities; and that other divine command still applies to our situation: ‘He that provideth not for his own household has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel;’ and, until that better era arrives, patriotism must supply the place of universal brotherhood.

“For the present Gortschakoff can do more good to the world by taking care of Russia. The great Bismarck can accomplish more for his era by being, as he is, a German to the core, and promoting the welfare of the German Empire. Let Beaconsfield take care of England, and McMahon of France, and let Americans devote themselves to the welfare of America. When each does his best for his own nation to promote prosperity, justice, and peace, all will have done more for the world than if all had attempted to be cosmopolitans rather than patriots. [Applause.]

“But I wish to say, Mr. Chairman, that I have no sympathy with those who approach this question only from the stand-point of their own local, selfish interest. When a man comes to me and says, ‘Put a prohibitory duty on the foreign article which competes with my product, that I may get rich more rapidly,’ he does not excite my sympathy; he repels me; and when another says, ‘Give no protection to the manufacturing industries, for I am not a manufacturer and do not care to have them sustained,’ I say that he, too, is equally mercenary and unpatriotic. If we were to legislate in that spirit, I might turn to the gentleman from Chicago and say, ‘Do not ask me to vote for an appropriation to build a court-house or a post-office in your city; I never expect to get any letters from that office, and the people of my district never expect to be in your courts.’ If we were to act in this spirit of narrow isolation we should be unfit for the national positions we occupy.

“Too much of our tariff discussions have been warped by narrow and sectional considerations. But when we base our action upon the conceded national importance of the great industries I have referred to, when we recognize the fact that artisans and their products are essential to the well-being of our country, it follows that there is no dweller in the humblest cottage on our remotest frontier who has not a deep personal interest in the legislation that shall promote these great national industries. Those arts that enable our nation to rise in the scale of civilization bring their blessings to all, and patriotic citizens will cheerfully bear a fair share of the burden necessary to make their country great and self-sustaining. I will defend a tariff that is national in its aims, that protects and sustains those interests without which the nation can not become great and self-sustaining.

“So important, in my view, is the ability of the nation to manufacture all these articles necessary to arm, equip, and clothe our people, that if it could not be secured in any other way I would vote to pay money out of the Federal Treasury to maintain government iron and steel, woolen and cotton mills, at whatever cost. Were we to neglect these great interests and depend upon other nations, in what a condition of helplessness would we find ourselves when we should be again involved in war with the very nations on whom we were depending to furnish us these supplies? The system adopted by our fathers is wiser, for it so encourages the great national industries as to make it possible at all times for our people to equip themselves for war, and at the same time increase their intelligence and skill so as to make them better fitted for all the duties of citizenship both in war and in peace. We provide for the common defense by a system which promotes the general welfare.

“I have tried thus summarily to state the grounds on which a tariff which produces the necessary revenue and at the same time promotes American manufactures, can be sustained by large-minded men, for national reasons. How high the rates of such a tariff ought to be is a question on which there may fairly be differences of opinion.

“Fortunately or unfortunately, on this question I have long occupied a position between two extremes of opinion. I have long believed, and I still believe, that the worst evil which has afflicted the interests of the American artisans and manufacturers has been the tendency to extremes in our tariff legislation. Our history for the last fifty years has been a repetition of the same mistake. One party comes into power, and believing that a protective tariff is a good thing establishes a fair rate of duty. Not content with that, they say: ‘This works well, let us have more of it,’ and they raise the rates still higher, and perhaps go beyond the limits of national interest.

“Every additional step in that direction increases the opposition and threatens the stability of the whole system. When the policy of increase is pushed beyond a certain point, the popular reaction sets in; the opposite party gets into power and cuts down the high rates. Not content with reducing the rates that are unreasonable, they attack and destroy the whole protective system. Then follows a deficit in the Treasury, the destruction of manufacturing interests, until the reaction again sets in, the free-traders are overthrown, and a protective system is again established. In not less than four distinct periods during the last fifty years has this sort of revolution taken place in our industrial system. Our great national industries have thus been tossed up and down between two extremes of opinion.

“During my term of service in this House I have resisted the effort to increase the rates of duty whenever I thought an increase would be dangerous to the stability of our manufacturing interests; and by doing so, I have sometimes been thought unfriendly to the policy of protecting American industry. When the necessity of the revenues and the safety of our manufactures warranted, I have favored a reduction of rates; and these reductions have aided to preserve the stability of the system. In one year, soon after the close of the war, we raised $212,000,000 of revenue from customs.

“In 1870 we reduced the custom duties by the sum of twenty-nine and one-half millions of dollars. In 1872 they were again reduced by the sum of forty-four and one half millions. Those reductions were in the main wise and judicious; and although I did not vote for them all, yet they have put the fair-minded men of this country in a position where they can justly resist any considerable reduction below the present rates.

“My view of the danger of extreme positions on the questions of tariff rates may be illustrated by a remark made by Horace Greeley in the last conversation I ever had with that distinguished man. Said he:

“‘My criticism of you is that you are not sufficiently high protective in your views.’

“I replied:

“‘What would you advise?’

“He said:

“‘If I had my way—if I were king of this country—I would put a duty of $100 a ton on pig-iron and a proportionate duty on every thing else that can be produced in America. The result would be that our people would be obliged to supply their own wants; manufactures would spring up; competition would finally reduce prices; and we should live wholly within ourselves.’

“I replied that the fatal objection to his theory was that no man is king of this country, with power to make his policy permanent. But as all our policies depend upon popular support, the extreme measure proposed would beget an opposite extreme, and our industries would suffer from violent reactions. For this reason I believe that we ought to seek that point of stable equilibrium somewhere between a prohibitory tariff on the one hand, and a tariff that gives no protection on the other. What is that point of stable equilibrium? In my judgment it is this: a rate so high that foreign producers can not flood our markets and break down our home manufacturers, but not so high as to keep them altogether out, enabling our manufacturers to combine and raise the prices, nor so high as to stimulate an unnatural and unhealthy growth of manufactures.

“In other words, I would have the duty so adjusted that every great American industry can fairly live and make fair profits; and yet so low that if our manufacturers attempted to put up prices unreasonably, the competition from abroad would come in and bring down prices to a fair rate. Such a tariff I believe will be supported by the great majority of Americans. We are not far from having such a tariff in our present law. In some respects we have departed from that standard. Wherever it does, we should amend it, and by so doing we shall secure stability and prosperity.

“This brings me to the consideration of the pending bill. It was my hope, at the beginning of the present session, that the Committee of Ways and Means would enter upon a revision of the tariff in the spirit I have indicated. The Secretary of the Treasury suggested in his annual report that a considerable number of articles which produced but a small amount of revenue, and were not essential to the prosperity of our manufacturers, could be placed upon the free list, thus simplifying the law and making it more consistent in its details. I was ready to assist in such a work of revision; but the committee had not gone far before it was evident that they intended to attack the whole system, and, as far as possible, destroy it. The results of their long and arduous labors are embodied in the pending bill.

“Some of the rates can be slightly reduced without serious harm; but many of the reductions proposed in this bill will be fatal. It is related that when a surgeon was probing an emperor’s wound to find the ball, he said:

“‘Can your Majesty allow me to go deeper?’

“His Majesty replied:

“‘Probe a little deeper and you will find the Emperor.’

“It is that little deeper probing by this bill that will touch the vital interests of this country and destroy them.

“The chief charge I make against this bill is that it seeks to cripple the protective features of the law. It increases rates where an increase is not necessary, and it cuts them down where cutting will kill. One of the wisest provisions of our present law is the establishment of a definite free list. From year to year when it has been found that any article could safely be liberated from duty it has been put upon the free list. A large number of raw materials have thus been made free of duty. This has lightened the burdens of taxation, and at the same time aided the industries of the country.

“To show the progress that has been made in this direction, it should be remembered that in 1867 the value of all articles imported free of duty was but $39,000,000, while in 1877 the free imports amounted to $181,000,000.

“As I have already said, the Secretary of the Treasury recommends a still further increase of the free list. But this bill abolishes the free list altogether and imposes duties upon a large share of articles now free. And this is done in order to make still greater reduction upon articles that must be protected if their manufacture is maintained in this country.

“Let me notice a few of the great industries at which this bill strikes. In the group of textile fabrics, of which I have spoken, reductions are made upon the manufactures of cotton which will stop three-quarters of the cotton mills of the country, and hopelessly prostrate the business. Still greater violence is done to the wool and woolen interests. The attempt has been made to show that the business of wool-growing has declined in consequence of our present law, and the fact has been pointed out that the number of sheep has been steadily falling off in the Eastern States. The truth is that sheep-culture in the United States was never in so healthy a condition as it is to-day. In 1860 our total wool product was sixty millions of pounds. In 1877 we produced two hundred and eight millions of pounds.

“It is true that there is not now so large a number of sheep in the Eastern States as there were a few years since; but the center of that industry has been shifted. Of the thirty-five and a half millions of sheep now in the United States, fourteen and a half millions are in Texas and the States and Territories west of the Rocky Mountains. California alone has six and a half millions of sheep. Not the least important feature of this interest is the facility it offers for cheap animal food. A great French statesman has said: ‘It is more important to provide food than clothing,’ and the growth of sheep accomplishes both objects. Ninety-five per cent. of all the woolen fabrics manufactured in this country are now made of native wool.

“The tariff on wools and woolens was adopted in 1867, after a most careful and thorough examination of both the producing and manufacturing interests. It was the result of an adjustment between the farmers and manufacturers, and has been advantageous to both. A small reduction of the rates could be made without injury.

“Both of these interests consented to a reduction, and submitted their plan to the Committee of Ways and Means. But instead of adopting it, the committee have struck those interests down, and put a dead level ad valorem duty upon all wools. The chairman tells us that the committee had sought to do away with the ad valorem system, because it gave rise to fraudulent invoices and undervaluation. Yet on the interest that yields twenty millions of revenue, he proposes to strike down the specific duties and put the interest upon one dead level of ad valorem duty without regard to quality.

“I would not introduce sectional topics in this discussion, but I must notice one curious feature of this bill. In the great group of provisions, on which nearly fifty millions of revenue are paid into the Treasury, I find that thirty-seven millions of that amount come from imported sugar. No one would defend the levying of so heavy a tax upon a necessary article of food were it not that a great agricultural interest is thereby protected, and that interest is mainly confined to the State of Louisiana. I am glad that the Government has given its aid to the State, for not a pound of sugar could be manufactured there if the tariff law did not protect it.

“As the law now stands, the average ad valorem duty on sugar is sixty-two and one-half per cent. But what has this bill done? The complaint is made by its advocates that the rates are now too high. The rates on all dutiable articles average about forty-two per cent.; yet on sugar the average is sixty-two and one-half per cent., greatly above the average. This bill puts up the average duty on sugar to about seventy per cent. This one interest, which is already protected by a duty much higher than the average, is granted a still higher rate, while other interests, now far below the average rate, are put still lower. Metals, that now average but thirty-six per cent. ad valorem, far less than the general average—but little more than half of the rate on sugar—are cut down still more, while the protection of the sugar interest is made still higher.

“If the planters of Louisiana were to get the benefit there would be some excuse for the increase; but what is the fact? One thousand four hundred and fifteen million pounds of sugar were imported into this country last year, but not one pound of refined sugar; every pound was imported in the crude form, going into the hands of about twenty-five gentlemen, mostly in the city of New York, who refine every pound of this enormous quantity of imported sugar. This bill increases the rates on the high grades of sugar far more than on the lower grades, and makes the importation of any finished sugar impossible. It strengthens and makes absolute the monopoly already given to the refining interest; yet we are told that this is a revenue-reform tariff.

“Before closing I wish to notice one thing which I believe has not been mentioned in this debate. A few years ago we had a considerable premium on gold, and as our tariff duties were paid in coin, there was thus created an increase in the tariff rates. In 1875, for instance, the average currency value of coin was one hundred and fourteen cents; in 1876, one hundred and eleven cents; in 1877, one hundred and four cents. Now, thanks to the resumption law and the rate of our exchanges and credit, the premium on gold is almost down to zero. But this fall in the premium has operated as a steady reduction of the tariff rates, because the duties were paid in gold and the goods were sold in currency.

“Now, when gentlemen say that the rates were high a few years ago, it should be remembered that they have been falling year by year, as the price of gold has been coming down. When, therefore, gentlemen criticise the rates as fixed in the law of 1872, they should remember that the fall in the premium on gold has wrought a virtual reduction of fourteen per cent. in the tariff rates.

“Mr. Chairman, the Committee of Ways and Means has done a large amount of work on this bill. But the views which have found expression in his bill must be criticised without regard to personal consideration. A bill so radical in its character, so dangerous to our business prosperity, would work infinite mischief at this time, when the country is just recovering itself from a long period of depression and getting again upon solid ground, just coming up out of the wild sea of panic and distress which has tossed us so long.

“Let it be remembered that twenty-two per cent. of all the laboring people of this country are artisans engaged in manufactures. Their culture has been fostered by our tariff laws. It is their pursuits and the skill which they have developed that produced the glory of our centennial exhibition. To them the country owes the splendor of the position it holds before the world more than to any other equal number of our citizens. If this bill becomes a law, it strikes down their occupation and throws into the keenest distress the brightest and best elements of our population.

“It is not simply a stalking-horse upon which gentlemen can leap to show their horsemanship in debate; it is not an innocent lay-figure upon which gentlemen may spread the gaudy wares of their rhetoric without harm; but it is a great, dangerous monster, a very Polyphemus which stalks through the land. Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum. If its eye be not out, let us take it out and end the agony.” [Applause on the Republican side.]

But the correlative of revenue is expenditure. Only one other man of this age ever attempted a philosophy of national expenditure besides Garfield—that was Gladstone. No other American ever attempted to regulate appropriations by a philosophical principle. No other man ever attempted to reduce the fabulous and irregular outlay of the Government to a science. Of Garfield’s studies in this direction we have spoken elsewhere. On January 23, 1872, upon the introduction of his first bill as Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations he delivered an elaborate speech on the subject of

PUBLIC EXPENDITURES

“It is difficult to discuss expenditures comprehensively without discussing also the revenues; but I shall on this occasion allude to the revenues only on a single point. Revenue and the expenditure of revenue form by far the most important element in the government of modern nations. Revenue is not, as some one has said, the friction of a government, but rather its motive power. Without it the machinery of a government can not move; and by it all the movements of a government are regulated. The expenditure of revenue forms the grand level from which all heights and depths of legislative action are measured. The increase and the diminution of the burdens of taxation depend alike upon their relation to this level of expenditures. That level once given, all other policies must conform to it and be determined by it. The expenditure of revenue and its distribution, therefore, form the best test of the health, the wisdom, and the virtue of a government. Is a government corrupt? that corruption will inevitably, sooner or later, show itself at the door of the treasury in demands for money. There is scarcely a conceivable form of corruption or public wrong that does not at last present itself at the cashier’s desk and demand money. The legislature, therefore, that stands at the cashier’s desk and watches with its Argus eyes the demands for payment over the counter, is most certain to see all the forms of public rascality. At that place, too, we may feel the Nation’s pulse; we may determine whether it is in the delirium of fever or whether the currents of its life are flowing with the steady throbbings of health. What could have torn down the gaudy fabric of the late government of France so effectually as the simple expedient of compiling and publishing a balance sheet of the expenditures of Napoleon’s government, as compared with the expenditures of the fifteen years which preceded his reign? A quiet student of finance exhibited the fact that during fifteen years of Napoleon’s reign the expenditures of his government had been increased by the enormous total of three hundred and fifty million dollars in gold per annum.

HOW SHALL EXPENDITURES BE GAUGED?

“Such, in my view, are the relations which the expenditures of the revenue sustain to the honor and safety of the nation. How, then, shall they be regulated? By what gauge shall we determine the amount of revenue that ought to be expended by a nation? This question is full of difficulty, and I can hope to do little more than offer a few suggestions in the direction of its solution.

“And, first, I remark that the mere amount of the appropriations is in itself no test. To say that this government is expending two hundred and ninety-two million dollars a year, may be to say that we are penurious and niggardly in our expenditures, and may be to say that we are lavish and prodigal. There must be some ground of relative judgment, some test by which we can determine whether expenditures are reasonable or exorbitant. It has occurred to me that two tests can be applied.

TEST OF POPULATION.

“The first and most important is the relation of expenditure to the population. In some ratio corresponding to the increase of population it may be reasonable to increase the expenditures of a government. This is the test usually applied in Europe. In an official table I have before me the expenditures of the British government for the last fifteen years, I find the statement made over against the annual average of each year of the expenditure per capita of the population. The average expenditure per capita for that period, was two pounds, seven shillings and seven pence, or about twelve dollars in gold, with a slight tendency to decrease each year. In our own country, commencing with 1830 and taking the years when the census was taken, I find that the expenditures, per capita, exclusive of payments on the principal and interest of the public debt were as follows:

In 1830 $1 03 In 1840 1 41 In 1850 1 60 In 1860 1 94 In 1870 4 26

or, excluding pensions, three dollars and fifty-two cents. No doubt this test is valuable. But how shall it be applied? Shall the increase of expenditures keep pace with the population? We know that population tends to increase in a geometrical ratio, that is, at a per cent. compounded annually. If the normal increase of expenditures follow the same law, we might look forward to the future with alarm. It is manifest, however, that the necessity of expenditures does not keep pace with the mere increase of numbers; and while the total sum of money expended must necessarily be greater from year to year, the amount per capita ought in all well-regulated governments in time of peace to grow gradually less.

TEST OF TERRITORIAL SETTLEMENT AND EXPANSION.

“But in a country like ours there is another element besides population that helps to determine the movement of expenditures. That element can hardly be found in any other country. It is the increase and settlement of our territory, the organic increase of the nation by the addition of new States. To begin with the original thirteen States, and gauge expenditure till now by the increase of population alone, would be manifestly incorrect. But the fact that there have been added twenty-four States, and that we now have nine territories, not including Alaska, brings a new and important element into the calculation. It is impossible to estimate the effect of this element upon expenditures. But if we examine our own records from the beginning of the Government, it will appear that every great increase of settled territory has very considerably added to the expenditures.

“If these reflections be just, it will follow that the ordinary movement of our expenditures depends upon the action of two forces: first, the natural growth of population, and second, the extension of our territory and the increase in the number of our States. Some day, no doubt—and I hope at no distant day—we shall have reached the limit of territorial expansion. I hope we have reached it now, except to enlarge the number of States within our borders; and when we have settled our unoccupied lands, when we have laid down the fixed and certain boundaries of our country, then the movement of our expenditure in time of peace will be remitted to the operation of the one law, the increase of population. That law, as I have already intimated, is not an increase by a per cent. compounded annually, but by a per cent. that decreases annually. No doubt the expenditures will always increase from year to year; but they ought not to increase by the same per cent. from year to year; the rate of increase ought gradually to grow less.

EXPENDITURES OF ENGLAND.

“In England, for example, where the territory is fixed, and they are remitted to the single law of increase of population, the increase of expenditure during the last fifteen years of peace has been only about one and three-quarter per cent. compounded annually. I believe nobody has made a very careful estimate of the rate in our country; our growth has been too irregular to afford data for an accurate estimate. But a gentleman who has given much attention to the subject expressed to me the belief that our expenditures in time of peace have increased about eight per cent. compounded annually. I can hardly believe it; yet I am sure that somewhere between that and the English rate will be found our rate of increase in times of peace. I am aware that such estimates as these are unsatisfactory, and that nothing short of the actual test of experience can determine the movements of our expenditures; but these suggestions which have resulted from some study of the subject, I offer for the reflection of those who care to follow them out.

EFFECTS OF WAR ON EXPENDITURES.

“Thus far I have considered the expenditures that arise in times of peace. Any view of this subject would be incomplete that did not include a consideration of the effect of war upon national expenditures. I have spoken of what the rate ought to be in time of peace, for carrying on a government. I will next consider the effect of war on the rate of increase. And here we are confronted with that anarchic element, the plague of nations, which Jeremy Bentham called ‘mischief on the largest scale.’ After the fire and blood of the battle-fields have disappeared, nowhere does war show its destroying power so certainly and so relentlessly as in the columns which represent the taxes and expenditures of the nation. Let me illustrate this by two examples.

“In 1792, the year preceding the commencement of the great war against Napoleon, the expenditures of Great Britain were less than twenty million pounds sterling.

“During the twenty-four years that elapsed, from the commencement of that wonderful struggle until its close at Waterloo, in 1815, the expenditures rose by successive bounds, until, in one year near the close of the war, it reached the enormous sum of one hundred and six million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

“The unusual increase of the public debt, added to the natural growth of expenditures from causes already discussed, made it impossible for England ever to reach her old level of expenditure. It took twenty years after Waterloo to reduce expenditures from seventy-seven million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the annual average of the second decade of the century, to forty-five million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the expenditure for 1835.

“This last figure was the lowest England has known during the present century. Then followed nearly forty years of peace, from Waterloo to the Crimean war in 1854. The figures for that period may be taken to represent the natural growth of expenditures in England. During that period the expenditures increased, in a tolerably uniform ratio, from forty-five million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the amount for 1835, to about fifty-one million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, the average for the five years ending 1853–’54. This increase was about four million dollars of our money per annum. Then came the Crimean war of 1854–1856, during one year of which the expenditures rose to eighty-four million five hundred thousand pounds.

“Again, as after the Napoleonic war, it required several years for the expenditures of the kingdom to get down to the new level of peace, which level was much higher than that of the former peace.

“During the last ten years the expenditures of Great Britain have again been gradually increasing; the average for the six years ending with March 31, 1871, being sixty-eight million seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

WAR EXPENDITURES OF THE UNITED STATES.

“As the second example of the effect of war on the movement of national expenditures, I call attention to our own history.

“Considering the ordinary expenses of the Government, exclusive of payments on the principal and interest of the public debt, the annual average may be stated thus:

“Beginning with 1791, the last decade of the eighteenth century showed an annual average of three million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. During the first decade of the present century, the average was nearly five million five hundred thousand dollars. Or, commencing with 1791, there followed twenty years of peace, during which the annual average of ordinary expenditures was more than doubled. Then followed four years, from 1812 to 1815, inclusive, in which the war with England swelled the average to twenty-five million five hundred thousand dollars. During the five years succeeding that war, the average was sixteen million five hundred thousand dollars, and it was not until 1821 that the new level of peace was reached. During the five years, from 1820 to 1825, inclusive, the annual average was eleven million five hundred thousand dollars. From 1825 to 1830, it was thirteen million dollars. From 1830 to 1835, it was seventeen million dollars. From 1835 to 1840, in which period occurred the Seminole war, it was thirty million five hundred thousand dollars. From 1840 to 1845, it was twenty-seven million dollars. From 1845 to 1850, during which occurred the Mexican war, it was forty million five hundred thousand dollars. From 1850 to 1855, it was forty-seven million five hundred thousand dollars. From 1855 to June 30, 1861, it was sixty-seven million dollars. From June 30, 1861, to June 30, 1866, seven hundred and thirteen million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and from June 30, 1866, to June 30, 1871, the annual average was one hundred and eighty-nine million dollars.

“It is interesting to inquire how far we may reasonably expect to go in the descending scale before we reach the new level of peace. We have already seen that it took England twenty years after Waterloo before she reached such a level. Our own experience has been peculiar in this, that our people have been impatient of debt, and have always determinedly set about the work of reducing it.

DURATION OF WAR EXPENDITURES.

“Throughout our history there may be seen a curious uniformity in the movement of the annual expenditures for the years immediately following a war. We have not the data to determine how long it was, after the war of independence, before the expenditures ceased to decrease; that is, before they reached the point where their natural growth more than balanced the tendency to reduction of war expenditure; but in the years immediately following all our subsequent wars, the decrease has continued for a period almost exactly twice the length of the war itself.

“After the war of 1812–’15, the expenditures continued to decline for eight years, reaching the lowest point in 1823.

“After the Seminole war, which ran through three years, 1836, 1837, and 1838, the new level was not reached until 1844, six years after its close.

“After the Mexican war, which lasted two years, it took four years, until 1852, to reach the new level of peace.”

Probably the most remarkable portion of this speech is the following prophecy:

WHEN SHALL WE REACH OUR NEW LEVEL OF EXPENDITURES?

“It is, perhaps, unsafe to base our calculations for the future on these analogies; but the wars already referred to have been of such varied character, and their financial effects have been so uniform, as to make it not unreasonable to expect that a similar result will follow our late war. If so, the decrease of our ordinary expenditures, exclusive of the principal and interest of the public debt, will continue until 1875 or 1876.

“It will be seen by an analysis of our expenditures, that, exclusive of charges on the public debt, nearly fifty million dollars are expenditures directly for the late war. Many of these expenditures will not again appear, such as the bounty and back pay of volunteer soldiers, and payment of illegal captures of British vessels and cargoes. We may reasonably expect that the expenditures for pensions will hereafter steadily decrease, unless our legislation should be unwarrantably extravagant. We may also expect a large decrease in expenditures for the internal revenue department. Possibly, we may ultimately be able to abolish the department altogether. In the accounting and disbursing bureaus of the treasury department, we may also expect a further reduction of the force now employed in settling war claims.

“We can not expect so rapid a reduction of the public debt and its burden of interest as we have witnessed for the last three years; but the reduction will doubtless continue, and the burden of interest will constantly decrease. I know it is not safe to attempt to forecast the future; but I venture to express the belief that if peace continues, the year 1876 will witness our ordinary expenditures reduced to one hundred and twenty-five million dollars, and the interest on our public debt to ninety-five million dollars; making our total expenditures, exclusive of payment on the principal of the public debt, two hundred and thirty million dollars. Judging from our own experience and from that of other nations, we may not hope thereafter to reach a lower figure. In making this estimate, I have assumed that there will be a considerable reduction of the burdens of taxation; and a revenue not nearly so great in excess of the expenditures as we now collect.”

Seven years afterwards, in the June number (1879) of the North American Review, General Garfield quoted the above paragraphs from the speech of January, 1872, and called attention to the fulfillment of his prediction in the following words:

“Reviewing the subject in the light of subsequent experience, it will be seen that the progress of reduction of expenditures from the war level has been very nearly in accordance with these expectations of seven years ago.

“The actual expenditures since the war, including interest on the public debt, as shown by the official record, were as follows:

1865 $1,297,555,224 41 1866 520,899,416 99 1867 357,542,675 16 1868 377,340,284 86 1869 322,865,277 80 1870 399,653,560 75 1871 292,177,188 25 1872 277,517,962 67 1873 290,345,245 33 1874 287,133,873 17 1875 274,623,392 84 1876 258,459,797 33 1877 238,660,008 93 1878 236,964,326 80

“Omitting the first of these years, in which the enormous payments to the army swelled the aggregate of expenses to $1,297,000,000, and beginning with the first full year after the termination of the war, it will be seen that the expenditures have been reduced, at first very rapidly, and then more slowly, from $520,000,000 in 1866 to about $237,000,000 in 1878.

“The estimate quoted above was that in 1876 expenditures would be reduced to $230,000,000, including $95,000,000 for interest on the public debt. In 1877, one year later than the estimated date, the actual reduction had reached $238,000,000, including $97,000,000 for interest on the public debt. [He means the expenditures had been reduced to $238,000,000.]

“It is evident that in 1877 we had very nearly reached the limit of possible reduction, for the aggregate expenditures of 1878 show a reduction below that of the preceding year of less than $2,000,000; and the expenditures, actual and estimated, for the current year ending June 30, 1879, are $240,000,000. It thus appears that 1878 was the turning-point from which, under the influence of the elements of normal growth, we may expect a constant, though it ought to be a small, annual increase of expenditures.”

If anywhere there is to be found a more scientific statesmanship than this, the average man knows not the place to seek it out. Garfield had discovered the law of the increase and decrease of national expenditures. It was as fixed as the laws which lengthen and shorten the day. Scientists agree that the laws of society are far more difficult of discovery and of demonstration than the laws of nature. Only one man in a generation makes any real advance in the study of those laws which pervade the affairs of men. In his philosophy of public expenditures, James A. Garfield was that man of his political generation. On March 5, 1874, in another speech on the same topic, he unfolded the philosophy and laws of growth of the public debt. As usual, it is an illumination of a vast and foggy subject. It is impossible to give, in our already crowded pages, even a synopsis of this address.

There can be no question that Garfield was the most perfect master of the themes of revenue and expenditure in his generation. With the exception of the tariff, they were not questions which could be brought into politics. In their nature, they were so dry and complicated that the House itself, much less the people, knew but little of the enormous labor performed by General Garfield on the subject. He applied his immense energies to the task as cheerfully as if the questions were those of the next campaign, instead of being known only in the committee-room. His research would gain him no contemporary laurels, his toil bring him no applause. But he grappled with the monster of public debt, which had its clutch on England’s throat, and was reaching toward the New Republic. He who knew so well how to thrill the audience and shake the building with plausive thunders, embodied the results of his work in speeches, which his friends possibly thought impractical and certainly tiresome. They lie embalmed in the mighty mausoleum of the Congressional Record, hidden away from the prying eyes of mankind. Some future statesman, with more industry or genius than his contemporaries, will, perchance, come with pick and shovel to excavate and disinter the buried children of the brain. If so, like the recently-discovered remains at Mycenæ and Thebes, they will be pronounced of royal blood.

We now pass to the last branch of the subject discussed in this chapter. This relates to the record of Garfield in relation to questions concerning the general character and tendency of American institutions.

This question opens the door to what would make a volume of General Garfield’s speeches. Under a rigid necessity of condensation, we can only give broken extracts from three addresses.

On July 2, 1873, before the students of the Western Reserve College, at Hudson, Ohio, he spoke on—

THE FUTURE OF THE REPUBLIC.

“What do men mean when they predict the immortality of any thing earthly?

“The first Napoleon was one day walking through the galleries of the Louvre, filled with the wonders of art which he had stolen from the conquered capitals of Europe. As he passed the marvelous picture of Peter Martyr, one of the seven masterpieces of the world, he overheard an enthusiastic artist exclaim: ‘Immortal work!’ Turning quickly upon his heel, the Emperor asked: ‘What is the average life of an oil-painting?’ ‘Five hundred years,’ answered the artist. ‘Immortal!’ the Corsican scornfully repeated as he passed on, thinking doubtless of Austerlitz and Marengo. Six years ago the wonderful picture of Peter Martyr was dissolved in the flames of a burning church at Venice, and, like Austerlitz, is now only a memory and a dream.

“When the great lyric poet of Rome ventured to predict immortality for his works, he could think of no higher human symbol of immortality than the Eternal City and her institutions, crowded with seven centuries of glorious growth; and so Horace declared that his verses would be remembered as long as the high-priest of Apollo and the silent vestal virgin should climb the steps of the Capitol. Fifteen centuries ago the sacred fires of Vesta went out, never to be rekindled. For a thousand years Apollo has had no shrine, no priest, no worshiper on the earth. The steps of the Capitol, and the temples that crowned it, live only in dreams, and to-day the antiquary digs and disputes among the ruins, and is unable to tell us where on the Capitoline hill the great citadel of Rome stood.

“There is much in the history of dead empires to sadden and discourage our hope for the permanence of any human institution. But a deeper study reveals the fact that nations have perished only when their institutions have ceased to be serviceable to the human race; when their faith has become an empty form, and the destruction of the old is indispensable to the growth of the new. Growth is better than permanence; and permanent growth is better than all. Our faith is large in time; and we—

“‘Doubt not through the ages, an increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns.’

“It matters little what may be the forms of national institutions, if the life, freedom, and growth of society are secured. To save the life of a nation, it is sometimes necessary to discard the old form and make room for the new growth; for—

“‘Old decays but foster new creations; Bones and ashes feed the golden corn; Fresh elixirs wander every moment Down the veins through which the live part feeds its child, the life unborn.’

“There are two classes of forces whose action and reaction determine the condition of a nation—the forces of repression and expression. The one acts from without—limits, curbs, restrains. The other acts from within—expands, enlarges, propels. Constitutional forms, statutory limitations, conservative customs belong to the first. The free play of individual life, the opinion and action belong to the second. If these forces be happily balanced, if there be a wise conservation and correlation of both, a nation may enjoy the double blessing of progress and permanence.

“How are these forces acting upon our nation at the present time?

“Our success has been so great hitherto, we have passed safely through so many perils which at the time seemed almost fatal, that we may assume that the Republic will continue to live and prosper, unless it shall be assailed by dangers which outnumber and outweigh the elements of its strength. It is idle to boast of what we are, and what we are to be, unless at the same time we compare our strength with the magnitude of our dangers.

“What, then, are our dangers: and how can they be conquered?...

“In the first place, our great dangers are not from without. We do not live by the consent of any other nation. We must look within to find the elements of danger. The first and most obvious of these is territorial expansion—overgrowth; the danger that we shall break in pieces by our own weight. This has been the commonplace of historians and publicists for many centuries; and its truth has found many striking illustrations in the experience of mankind. But we have fair ground for believing that new conditions and new forces have nearly, if not wholly, removed the ground of this danger. Distance, estrangement, isolation have been overcome by the recent amazing growth in the means of intercommunion. For political and industrial purposes, California and Massachusetts are nearer neighbors to-day than were Philadelphia and Boston in the days of the Revolution. The people of all our thirty-seven States know more of each other’s affairs than the Vermonter knew of his Virginia neighbor’s fifty years ago. It was distance, isolation, ignorance of separate parts that broke the cohesive force of the great empires of antiquity. Public affairs are now more public, and private less private, than in former ages. The Railroad, the Telegraph, and the Press, have virtually brought our citizens, with their opinions and industries, face to face; and they live almost in each other’s sight. The leading political, social, and industrial events of this day will be reported and discussed at more than two millions of American breakfast-tables to-morrow morning. Public opinion is kept in constant exercise and training. It keeps itself constantly in hand—ready to approve, condemn, and command. It may be wrong, it may be tyrannical; but it is all-pervading, and constitutes, more than ever before, a strong band of nationality.

“After all, territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and its valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life. In them dwells its hope of immortality. Among them, if anywhere, are to be found its chief elements of destruction.”

In the latter part of the address, he discussed Lord Macaulay’s famous letter, in which he predicted that, with universal suffrage, our Republic was all sail and no ballast; that when the country was populated like Europe, the Government would fall in the inevitable conflict between labor and capital.

“With all my heart I repel that letter as false. My first answer is this: No man who has not lived among us can understand one thing about our institutions; no man who has been born and reared under monarchical governments can understand the vast difference between theirs and ours. How is it in monarchical governments? Their society is one series of caste upon caste. Down at the bottom, like the granite rocks in the crust of the earth, lie the great body of laboring men. An Englishman told me not long ago that in twenty-five years of careful study of the agricultural class of England, he had never known one who was born and reared in the ranks of farm laborers that rose above his class and became a well-to-do citizen. That is a most terrible sentence, that three millions of people should lie at the bottom of society, with no power to rise. Above them the gentry, the hereditary capitalist; above them, the nobility; above them, the royalty; and, crowning all, the sovereign—all impassable barriers of caste.

“No man born under such institutions can understand the mighty difference between them and us in this country. Thank God, and thank the fathers of the Republic who made, and the men who carried out the promises of the Declaration, that in this country there are no classes, fixed and impassable. Here society is not fixed in horizontal layers, like the crust of the earth, but as a great New England man said, years ago, it is rather like the ocean, broad, deep, grand, open, and so free in all its parts that every drop that mingles with the yellow sand at the bottom may rise through all the waters, till it gleams in the sunshine on the crest of the highest waves. So it is here in our free society, permeated with the light of American freedom. There is no American boy, however poor, however humble, orphan though he may be, that, if he have a clear head, a true heart, a strong arm, he may not rise through all the grades of society, and become the crown, the glory, the pillar of the State.

“Again, in depicting the dangers of universal suffrage, Macaulay leaves wholly out of the account the great counterbalancing force of universal education. He contemplates the government delivered over to a vast multitude of ignorant, vicious men, who have learned no self-control, who have never comprehended the national life, and who will wield the ballot solely for personal and selfish ends. If this were indeed the necessary condition of Democratic communities, it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to escape the logic of Macaulay’s letter. And here is a real peril—the danger that we shall rely upon the mere extent of the suffrage as a national safeguard. We can not safely, even for a moment, lose sight of the quality of the suffrage, which is more important than its quantity.

* * * * *

“Our faith in the Democratic principle rests upon the belief that intelligent men will see that their highest political good is in liberty, regulated by just and equal laws; and that in the distribution of political power it is safe to follow the maxim, ‘Each for all, and all for each.’ We confront the dangers of the suffrage by the blessings of universal education.”

We present next a brief extract from an address delivered February 11, 1879,

ON THE RELATION OF THE GOVERNMENT TO SCIENCE.

“What ought to be the relation of the National Government to science? What, if any thing, ought we to do in the way of promoting science? For example, if we have the power, would it be wise for Congress to appropriate money out of the Treasury to employ naturalists to find out all that is to be known of our American birds. Ornithology is a delightful and useful study; but would it be wise for Congress to make an appropriation for the advancement of that science? In my judgment manifestly not. We would thereby make one favored class of men the rivals of all the ornithologists who in their private way, following the bent of their genius, may be working out the results of science in that field. I have no doubt that an appropriation out of our Treasury for that purpose would be a positive injury to the advancement of science, just as an appropriation to establish a church would work injury to religion.

“Generally the desire of our scientific men is to be let alone to work in free competition with all the scientific men of the world; to develop their own results, and get the credit of them, each for himself; not to have the Government enter the lists as a rival of private enterprise.

“As a general principle, therefore, the United States ought not to interfere in matters of science, but should leave its development to the free, voluntary action of our great third estate, the people themselves.

“In this non-interference theory of the Government I do not go to the extent of saying that we should do nothing for education—for primary education. That comes under another consideration—the necessity of the nation to protect itself, and the consideration that it is cheaper and wiser to give education than to build jails. But I am speaking now of the higher sciences.

“To the general principle I have stated, there are a few obvious exceptions which should be clearly understood when we legislate on the subject. In the first place the Government should aid all sorts of scientific inquiry that are necessary to the intelligent exercise of its own functions.

“For example, as we are authorized by the Constitution, and compelled by necessity, to build and maintain light-houses on our coast and establish fog-signals, we are bound to make all necessary scientific inquiries in reference to light and its laws, sound and its laws—to do whatever in the way of science is necessary to achieve the best results in lighting our coasts and warning our mariners of danger. So, when we are building iron-clads for our navy, or casting guns for our army, we ought to know all that is scientifically possible to be known about the strength of materials and the laws of mechanics which apply to such structures. In short, wherever in exercising any of the necessary functions of the Government, scientific inquiry is needed; let us make it to the fullest extent, and at the public expense.

“There is another exception to the general rule of leaving science to the voluntary action of the people. Wherever any great popular interest, affecting whole classes, possibly all classes of the community, imperatively need scientific investigation, and private enterprise can not accomplish it, we may wisely intervene and help, where the Constitution gives us authority. For example, in discovering the origin of yellow fever, and the methods of preventing its ravages, the nation should do, for the good of all, what neither the States nor individuals can accomplish. I might perhaps include, in a third exception, those inquiries which, in consequence of their great magnitude and cost, can not be successfully made by private individuals. Outside these three classes of inquiries, the Government ought to keep its hands off, and leave scientific experiment and inquiry to the free competition of those bright, intelligent men whose genius leads them into the fields of research.”

Passing abruptly from valley to mountain-peak, we present the substance of one of the most characteristic and original speeches mentioned in this book. It was delivered March 29, 1879. Though political in its immediate object, it will probably be remembered and quoted from as long as the name of Garfield lingers on the lips of men. The speaker states the question before the House better than any one else could do.

REVOLUTION IN CONGRESS.

“Let me, in the outset, state as carefully as I may, the precise situation. At the last session, all our ordinary legislative work was done, in accordance with the usages of the House and the Senate, except as to two bills. Two of the twelve great appropriation bills for the support of the Government were agreed to in both Houses as to every matter of detail concerning the appropriation proper. We were assured by the committees of conference in both bodies that there would be no difficulty in adjusting all differences in reference to the amount of money to be appropriated and the objects of its appropriation. But the House of Representatives proposed three measures of distinctly independent legislation; one upon the Army Appropriation Bill, and two upon the Legislative Appropriation Bill. The three grouped together are briefly these: first, the substantial modification of certain sections of the law relating to the use of the army; second, the repeal of the jurors’ test oath; and third, the repeal of the laws regulating elections of members of Congress.

“These three propositions of legislation were insisted upon by the House, but the Senate refused to adopt them. So far it was an ordinary proceeding, one which occurs frequently in all legislative bodies. The Senate said to us, through their conferees: ‘We are ready to pass the appropriation bills, but are unwilling to pass, as riders, the three legislative measures you ask us to pass.’ Thereupon the House, through its conference committee, made the following declaration. And, in order that I may do exact justice, I read from the speech of the distinguished Senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck]:

“‘The Democratic conferees on the part of the House seem determined that unless those rights were secured to the people—’

“Alluding to the three points I have named—‘in the bill sent to the Senate they would refuse, under their constitutional right, to make appropriations to carry on the Government, if the dominant majority in the Senate insisted upon the maintenance of these laws and refused to consent to their appeal.’

“Then, after stating that if the position they had taken compelled an extra session, and that the new Congress would offer the repealing bills separately, and forecasting what would happen when the new House should be under no necessity of coercing the Senate, he declared that—

“‘If, however, the President of the United States, in the exercise of the power vested in him, should see fit to veto the bills thus presented to him, ... then I have no doubt those same amendments will be again made part of the appropriation bills, and it will be for the President to determine whether he will block the wheels of Government and refuse to accept necessary appropriations rather than allow the representatives of the people to repeal odious laws which they regard as subversive of their rights and privileges.... Whether that course is right or wrong, it will be adopted, and I have no doubt adhered to, no matter what happens with the appropriation bills.’

“That was the proposition made by the Democracy in Congress at the close of the Congress now dead.

“Another distinguished Senator [Mr. Thurman]—and I may properly refer to Senators of a Congress not now in existence—reviewing the situation, declared, in still more succinct terms:

“‘We claim the right, which the House of Commons in England established after two centuries of contest, to say we will not grant the money of the people unless there is a redress of grievances.’

“These propositions were repeated with various degrees of vehemence by the majority in the House.

“The majority in the Senate and the minority on this floor expressed the deepest anxiety to avoid an extra session and to avert the catastrophe thus threatened—the stoppage of the Government. They pointed out the danger to the country and its business interests of an extra session of Congress, and expressed their willingness to consent to any compromise consistent with their views of duty which should be offered—not in the way of coercion but in the way of fair adjustment—and asked to be met in a spirit of just accommodation on the other side. Unfortunately no spirit of adjustment was manifested in reply to their advances. And now the new Congress is assembled: and after ten days of caucus deliberation, the House of Representatives has resolved, substantially, to reaffirm the positions of its predecessors.

THE VOLUNTARY POWERS OF THE GOVERNMENT.

“I had occasion, at a late hour of the last Congress, to say something on what may be called the voluntary element in our institutions. I spoke of the distribution of the powers of Government. First, to the nation; second, to the States; and third, the reservation of power to the people themselves.

“I called attention to the fact that under our form of government the most precious rights that men can possess on this earth are not delegated to the nation, nor to the States, but are reserved to the third estate—the people themselves. I called attention to the interesting fact that lately the chancellor of the German Empire made the declaration that it was the chief object of the existence of the German government to defend and maintain the religion of Jesus Christ—an object in reference to which our Congress is absolutely forbidden by the Constitution to legislate at all. Congress can establish no religion; indeed, can make no law respecting it, because in the view of our fathers—the founders of our government—religion was too precious a right to intrust its interests by delegation to any body. Its maintenance was left to the voluntary action of the people themselves.

“In continuation of that thought, I wish now to speak of the voluntary element inside our Government—a topic that I have not often heard discussed, but one which appears to me of vital importance in any comprehensive view of our institutions.

“Mr. Chairman, viewed from the stand-point of a foreigner, our Government may be said to be the feeblest on the earth. From our stand-point, and with our experience, it is the mightiest. But why would a foreigner call it the feeblest? He can point out a half-dozen ways in which it can be destroyed without violence. Of course, all governments may be overturned by the sword; but there are several ways in which our Government may be annihilated without the firing of a gun.

“For example, if the people of the United States should say we will elect no Representatives to the House of Representatives. Of course, this is a violent supposition; but suppose they do not, is there any remedy? Does our Constitution provide any remedy whatever? In two years there would be no House of Representatives; of course no support of the Government, and no Government. Suppose, again, the States should say, through their Legislatures, we will elect no Senators. Such abstention alone would absolutely destroy this Government; and our system provides no process of compulsion to prevent it.

“Again, suppose the two Houses were assembled in their usual order, and a majority of one, in this body or in the Senate should firmly band themselves together and say, we will vote to adjourn the moment the hour of meeting arrives, and continue so to vote at every session during our two years of existence; the Government would perish, and there is no provision of the Constitution to prevent it. Or again, if a majority of one of either body should declare that they would vote down, and did vote down, every bill to support the Government by appropriations, can you find in the whole range of our judicial or our executive authority any remedy whatever? A Senator, or a member of this House is free, and may vote ‘no,’ on every proposition. Nothing but his oath and his honor restrains him. Not so with the executive and judicial officers. They have no power to destroy this Government. Let them travel an inch beyond the line of the law, and they fall within the power of impeachment. But, against the people who create Representatives; against the Legislatures who create Senators; against Senators and Representatives in these Halls, there is no power of impeachment; there is no remedy, if, by abstention or by adverse votes, they refuse to support the Government.

“At a first view, it would seem strange that a body of men so wise as our fathers were, should have left a whole side of their fabric open to these deadly assaults; but on a closer view of the case their wisdom will appear. What was their reliance? This: The sovereign of this nation, the God-crowned and Heaven-anointed sovereign, in whom resides ‘the State’s collected will,’ and to whom we all owe allegiance, is the people themselves. Inspired by love of country and by a deep sense of obligation to perform every public duty; being themselves the creators of all the agencies and forces to execute their own will, and choosing from themselves their representatives to express that will in the forms of law, it would have been like a suggestion of suicide to assume that any of these voluntary powers would be turned against the life of the Government. Public opinion—that great ocean of thought from whose level all heights and depths are measured—was trusted as a power amply able, and always willing, to guard all the approaches on that side of the Constitution from any assault on the life of the nation.

“Up to this hour our sovereign has never failed us. There has never been such a refusal to exercise those primary functions of sovereignty as either to endanger or cripple the Government; nor have the majority of the representatives of that sovereign in either House of Congress ever before announced their purpose to use their voluntary powers for its destruction. And now, for the first time in our history, and I will add for the first time for at least two centuries in the history of any English speaking nation, it is proposed and insisted upon that these voluntary powers shall be used for the destruction of the Government. I want it distinctly understood that the proposition which I read at the beginning of my remarks, and which is the programme announced to the American people to-day, is this: that if the House can not have its own way in certain matters, not connected with appropriations, it will so use, or refrain from using, its voluntary powers as to destroy the Government.

“Now, Mr. Chairman, it has been said on the other side that when a demand for the redress of grievances is made, the authority that runs the risk of stopping and destroying the Government, is the one that resists the redress. Not so. If gentlemen will do me the honor to follow my thought for a moment more, I trust I will make this denial good.

FREE CONSENT THE BASIS OF OUR LAWS.

“Our theory of law is free consent. That is the granite foundation of our whole superstructure. Nothing in this Republic can be law without consent—the free consent of the House; the free consent of the Senate; the free consent of the Executive, or, if he refuse it, the free consent of two-thirds of these bodies. Will any man deny that? Will any man challenge a line of the statement that free consent is the foundation rock of all our institutions? And yet the programme announced two weeks ago was that if the Senate refused to consent to the demand of the House, the Government should stop. And the proposition was then, and the programme is now, that, although there is not a Senate to be coerced, there is still a third independent branch in the legislative power of the Government whose consent is to be coerced at the peril of the destruction of this Government; that is, if the President, in the discharge of his duty, shall exercise his plain constitutional right to refuse his consent to this proposed legislation, the Congress will so use its voluntary powers as to destroy the Government. This is the proposition which we confront; and we denounce it as revolution.

“It makes no difference, Mr. Chairman, what the issue is. If it were the simplest and most inoffensive proposition in the world, yet if you demand, as a matter of coercion, that it shall be adopted against the free consent prescribed in the Constitution, every fair-minded man in America is bound to resist you as much as though his own life depended upon his resistance.

“Let it be understood that I am not arguing the merits of any one of the three amendments. I am discussing the proposed method of legislation; and I declare that it is against the Constitution of our country. It is revolutionary to the core, and is destructive of the fundamental element of American liberty, the free consent of all the powers that unite to make laws.

“In opening this debate, I challenge all comers to show a single instance in our history where this consent has been coerced. This is the great, the paramount issue, which dwarfs all others into insignificance. Victor Hugo said, in his description of the battle of Waterloo, that the struggle of the two armies was like the wrestling of two giants, when a chip under the heel of one might determine the victory. It may be that this amendment is the chip under your heel, or it may be that it is the chip on our shoulder. As a chip it is of small account to you or to us; but when it represents the integrity of the Constitution and is assailed by revolution, we fight for it as if it were a Koh-i-noor of purest water. [Applause.]

“The proposition now is, that after fourteen years have passed, and not one petition from one American citizen has come to us asking that this law be repealed; while not one memorial has found its way to our desks complaining of the law, so far as I have heard, the Democratic House of Representatives now hold if they are not permitted to force upon another House and upon the Executive against their consent the repeal of a law that Democrats made, this refusal shall be considered a sufficient ground for starving this Government to death. That is the proposition which we denounce as revolution. [Applause on the Republican side.]

“And here I ask the forbearance of gentlemen on the other side while I offer a suggestion which I make with reluctance. They will bear me witness that I have in many ways shown my desire that the wounds of the war should be healed; that the grass that has grown green over the graves of both armies might symbolize the returning spring of friendship and peace between citizens who were lately in arms against each other.

“But I am compelled by the necessities of the case to refer to a chapter of our recent history. The last act of Democratic domination in this Capitol, eighteen years ago, was striking and dramatic, perhaps heroic. Then the Democratic party said to the Republicans, ‘If you elect the man of your choice as President of the United States we will shoot your Government to death;’ and the people of this country, refusing to be coerced by threats or violence, voted as they pleased, and lawfully elected Abraham Lincoln President of the United States.

“Then your leaders, though holding a majority in the other branch of Congress, were heroic enough to withdraw from their seats and fling down the gage of mortal battle. We called it rebellion; but we recognized it as courageous and manly to avow your purpose, take all the risks, and fight it out on the open field. Notwithstanding your utmost efforts to destroy it, the Government was saved.

“To-day, after eighteen years’ defeat, the book of your domination is again opened, and your first act awakens every bitter memory, and threatens to destroy the confidence which your professions of patriotism inspired. You turned down a leaf of the history that recorded your last act of power in 1861, and you have now signalized your return to power by beginning a second chapter at the same page; not this time by a heroic act that declares war on the battle-field, but you say if all the legislative powers of the Government do not consent to let you tear certain laws out of the statute-book, you will not shoot our Government to death as you tried to do in the first chapter; but you declare that if we do not consent against our will, if you can not coerce an independent branch of this Government against its will, to allow you to tear from the statute-books some laws put there by the will of the people, you will starve the Government to death. [Great applause on the Republican side.]

“Between death on the field and death by starvation, I do not know that the American people will see any great difference. The end, if successfully reached, would be death in either case. Gentlemen, you have it in your power to kill this Government; you have it in your power by withholding these two bills, to smite the nerve-centers of our Constitution with the paralysis of death; and you have declared your purpose to do this, if you can not break down that fundamental element of free consent which, up to this hour, has always ruled in the legislation of this Government.”

The question stated at the beginning of this chapter is: Was Garfield a Statesman? In view of what the reader has perused since that question was put, it must at this point be restated—Was Garfield not a Statesman? The burden of proof has shifted. It is, of course, too soon to form a complete estimate of Garfield’s stature. We are too near to the man we loved. It will be for some future generation, farther removed from the spell of his name, and more able calmly to contemplate his life apart from the bloody death. This is the task for the historian of the future.

But what we say enters into the contemporary estimate of the dead President’s life and work. While the relative height of the mountain peak can only be told by viewing it from a long distance, where the entire range pictures its upper outline on the eye, the people who dwell at the foot of the mountain know it as the highest of their neighborhood. Moreover, some of the strongest objections to the contemporary estimates of a public man are entirely wanting in the present case. One of these is the popularity of his opinions or achievements. Men are apt to overestimate the abilities of a man who agrees with them. But time and again, on different questions, as in the currency and the enforcement act, the Wade-Davis manifesto, and the defense of Bowles and Milligan, we have seen General Garfield, not merely opposing, but openly defying the opinions of the people who elected him. When he thought a thing was true, no personal consideration could affect his public utterance. Such a spectacle is rare indeed in American politics.

Another reason why the present contemporary estimate of Garfield is more likely than usual to pass into history is that, in a sense, the vindication of his policy is already accomplished. When Cromwell died his work was incomplete. It was only one act in the great drama of the struggle against kings. The result was unknown at the time. Other fields were to run red with patriot blood, other monarchs to expire on the scaffold, before the solution of the deadly struggle should appear. It was uncertain whether any other government than monarchy was possible. No man was wise enough to tell, at Cromwell’s death, whether he had advanced or retarded civilization and progress. But this is a more rapid age. Events hurry on quickly. The questions growing out of the Civil War are very largely settled already. The historic genius which sits in judgment upon men and institutions is no longer in doubt as to those questions. Similarly, too, the stupendous problem of national finance, to which Garfield devoted such herculean labor, has reached its solution. It may be that all men are not willing to surrender yet, but beyond a doubt the return to a specie basis, and the wonderful improvement of the times following it, are a vindication of General Garfield’s statesmanship. It is the same with his position on the Force Bill and the Tariff. Some things, however, are still incomplete. The railway problem and the perpetuity of American institutions the future alone can pass upon; but these are the exceptions. The completeness of Mr. Lincoln’s work at the time of his assassination was not generally recognized, but we see it now. So with Garfield’s labors. They were in a sense complete. We may pass judgment upon them. The vindication of history is already at hand.

There is still another reason why the contemporary estimate of James A. Garfield is likely to become permanent. It is because the field of his principal achievements was not one of popular interest. It was not one which takes hold of the people’s hearts, and sweeps the popular judgment from its moorings. It lacked the glamour of military fame. The present age will hand down to posterity the fame of mighty soldiers, but their glory must be viewed with some reserve, some mistrust for the present.

Julius Cæsar, who was assassinated as a tyrant, now takes his place at the head of all secular history. Napoleon Bonaparte, the mention of whose name has, for three quarters of a century, been enough to convulse Paris and fill every wall with placards and every street with barricades, is likely to become the most odious figure of modern times. Garfield’s chosen field of work, that where his fame must rest, was to the careless masses dull. Men grow excited over battles, but not a pulse beats higher over a computation of interest on the public debt. The stories of marches and sieges thrill the reader a thousand years after every combatant has been vanquished by the black battalions of Death. But the most eloquent orator in America finds it difficult to hold an audience with the discussion of the tariff list or of public expenditures or of the currency, even when every man in the audience knows that his pocket is touched. If such discussions are thrown into newspaper editorials they are but little read. No argument, however powerful, on the fallacy of fiat money ever drew a tear or roused a cheer. No table of the reduction of public expenditure is ever greeted with huzzas. When the news of a victory comes, every corner has a bonfire and every window an illumination. But the change of the balance of trade in our favor only awakens a quiet satisfaction in the merchant’s heart as he glances through the morning papers. A new kind of gun attracts world-wide attention; it is talked over at every breakfast-table and described in every paper, but a new theory of surplus and deficits in the public treasury is utterly unnoticed. We see no flushed assemblies straining to catch every word that falls from the orator’s lips as he discusses the tariff on sugar or quinine. But when Kearney shouts his hoarse note of defiance to capital, the street is packed with listening thousands.

Hence it is that the man who significantly whispers “Garfield is overestimated” is more likely to be wrong than right. There is no tide of popular excitement over his work. The calm conviction of his abilities is a different thing from the feverish hurrahs of a campaign. In 1859 his old neighbors in his county had this conviction when they sent him to the State Senate. From the county, this spread to his Congressional district; from the district to the State of Ohio; from Ohio to the Union. It was gradual, and sure.

Garfield’s speeches must be the foundation for his fame. To these history will turn as a basis for its estimate. The first thing which is to be said of them, is that they dealt with the real problems of the epoch. That he was a great orator is true; that he was much more than this is equally true. While other men busied themselves with political topics Garfield took hold of the great non-political problems of the time. He refused to view them from a partisan or a personal stand-point. He grappled with the leviathans of reconstruction, tariff, and currency in the spirit of the statesman. That he was always right, we are not prepared to say; that he was right in his views on the great questions above mentioned, that with regard to them he was a leader of leaders, seems hardly to admit of a doubt. He was so radical in opinion that on almost every question he was ahead of his party and the country. This was the case in his arguments on the status of the rebel States, and what ought to be done with them; in his arguments in favor of a reduction of the tariff as prices declined after the war, and in his discussion of the currency and banking problems. Yet so nearly right was he that in every one of these instances Congress and the country gradually moved up to and occupied the position which he had taken in advance of them.

On the other hand, he was so conservative in practice that on no question was he ever an extremist. While he was a strong believer in the nationality of the Republic, and its powers of self-preservation, he faced the entire North in his opposition to the provisions of the “Force Bill,” for the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and the declaration of martial law in a country bleeding at every wound from war, but in a state of peace. Let no reader omit his speech of April 4, 1871. We say it the more willingly because at the time we thought Garfield was wrong. While he was a protectionist, he believed in a tariff which avoided both extremes. While he was an original and unintermittent hard-money man, he believed in the necessity of an elastic volume of currency. As the end of resumption forbade inflation, he demanded that every part of the country should have its share of banks, and the drafts and checks which they threw into the circulation.

Of the variety as well as the quantity of his work, men will not soon cease to wonder. There were few who could equal him in the discussion of any one of the great topics of the day, much less all of them. His name and fame can never be identified with any single question or measure, for he displayed the same ability on every subject alike.

In other respects he also differed from the men around him. He was a scholar in the broadest sense. His speeches are absolutely unequaled anywhere for their scientific method. In their philosophical discussions they were the product of the ripest scholarship; in their practical suggestions and arguments, they were, they are the product of the highest statesmanship.

Finally, a man of more spotless honor and loftier integrity never trod the earth than James A. Garfield. He lived in an atmosphere of purity and unselfishness, which, to the average man, is an unknown realm. After all, there are men enough with intellect in politics, but too few with character. An estimate of Garfield would be incomplete which failed to include the inflexible honesty of the great orator and legislator, whether in affairs public or private. History shows that while no institutions ever decayed because of the intellectual weakness of the people among which they flourished, empire after empire has perished from the face of the earth through the decay of morals in its people and its public men. History repeats itself. What has been, will be. Name after name of the great men of the new Republic is stained with private immorality and public crime. The noblest part of Garfield, with all his genius, was his spotless character. There was, there is, no greater, purer, manlier man.

“His tongue was framed to music, His hand was armed with skill, His face was the mold of beauty, And his heart the throne of will.”

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