Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/202

176 in circulation, and that other circumstances, such as the confidence of the people and solvency of the Government, remaining the same, an appreciable expansion of the currency will result in its depreciation, and vice versa. But as the currency changes in purchasing power, so the money value of all you possess, and all you have to buy or to sell, changes also; so that the power of the Government to determine the quantity of currency that shall be in circulation is virtually equivalent to the power, by its own arbitrary act, to increase or decrease the money value of all private property in the land; in other words, the private fortune of every citizen is placed at the mercy of the Government's arbitrary pleasure. You cannot venture upon any business enterprise, you cannot sell or buy a lot of merchandise on time or even for cash, you cannot make a contract involving the outlay or payment of money, but the Government will have the power to determine whether it will be to your profit or loss, and perhaps in extreme cases whether it will make you rich or bankrupt.

This, then, is the awful power of a government intrusted with the office of “making and keeping the volume of currency equal to the wants of trade.” You may ask me: Cannot the Congress of the United States be depended upon to exercise such a power with wisdom and discretion? The Lord preserve us! The wisest assembly of financiers in the world would be unable to discover any other means to make and keep the volume of currency equal to the wants of trade, than by a return to a specie basis where trade and currency may adjust themselves. But Congress! Give us the most honest and intelligent Congress we can ever expect to be blessed with, and the adaptation of the volume of an irredeemable paper currency to the ever-changing wants of trade by annual legislation will be found an utter impossibility. But now imagine a Congress controlled by statesmen like Governor