Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/480

454 will be if these Democratic demands be enacted into laws? Not only to prevent the resumption of specie payments now, but to render the resumption of specie payments utterly impossible forever, at least as long as such laws exist.

It is simply doubling the amount of paper money which the Government will have to redeem and at the same time stripping the Government of every means to provide for that redemption. The source from which the Government derived its coin for the payment of interest on the public debt being stopped, the coin reserve now in the Treasury will have to be drawn upon for such interest, and that reserve will soon vanish into nothing. How the Government is then to get coin even for the payment of the interest on the public debt, our Democratic friends fail to tell us. Finding no employment as currency here, gold will promptly go abroad where it is in demand for such employment, and we shall be further away from specie payments than ever before.

I repeat, therefore: that a thoroughbred inflationist should advocate this program is intelligible; it serves his purpose. But when a man, who ever again desires to see specie payments restored in this country, adopts such a platform, what shall we think of his understanding or his conscience? The defeat of resumption will not be the only result. No sooner is such a policy inaugurated than the premium on gold will again reappear, the value of the greenback now within a hair's breadth of gold will sink and gold will again be a subject of speculation and gambling.

This is inevitable, for everything will be thrown back into fluctuation and uncertainty. The step back from specie payments will put even the good faith of the Nation in question. Confidence will be more shaken than ever. A black cloud of new doubt will hang over every business