tion of their affairs, and will do much toward dissipating those unreal and fascinating visions of wealth to be won without industry which have broken the fortunes and ruinéd the morals of so many active and brilliant citizens.

My limits will not allow a discussion of the hardship and evils which it is feared will accompany the restoration of the old standard. Whatever they may be, they will be light and transient in comparison with those we shall endure if the doctrine of soft money prevails. I am not able to see why the approach to specie may not be made so gradual that the fluctuations in any one month will be less than those which we have suffered from month to month since 1869. We have travelled more than half the distance which then separated us from the gold standard.

A scale of appreciation like that by which England resumed in 1821 would greatly mitigate the hardships arising from the movement. Those who believe that the volume of our currency is but little above its normal level need not fear that there will be much contraction; for, with free banking, they may be sure that all the paper which can be an actual substitute for money will remain in circulation. No other ought to circulate.

The advocates of soft money are loud in their denunciation of the English Resumption Act of 1819, and parade the distorted views of that small and malignant minority of English writers who have arraigned the act as the cause of the agricultural distress of 1822, and the financial crash which followed, in 1825. The charge is absolutely unjust and unfounded. In 1822 a committee of the House of Commons, having investigated the causes of the agricultural distress of that and the preceding year, found that it was due to the operation of the corn laws, and to the enormous wheat crops of the two preceding seasons. Their report makes no reference to the resumption act as a cause of the distress. In both that and the following year, a few of the old opponents of hard money offered resolutions in the House of Commons, declaring that the resumption act was one of the causes of the public distress. The resolution of 1822 was defeated by a vote of one hundred and forty-one to twenty-seven, and that of 1823 was defeated by the still more decisive vote of one hundred and ninety-two to thirty. An overwhelming majority of intelligent Englishmen look back with pride and satisfaction upon the act of resumption as a just and benefi

cent measure.

But methods and details of management are of slight importance in comparison with the central purpose so often expressed by the nation. From that purpose there should be no retreat. To postpone its fulfilment beyond the day already fixed is both dangerous and useless. It will make the task harder than ever. Resumption could have been accomplished in 1867 with less difficulty than it can be in 1879. It can be accomplished more easily in 1879 than at any later date. It is said that we ought to wait until the vast mass of private debts can be adjusted. But when will that be done? Horace has told us of a rustic traveller who stood on the bank of a river, waiting for its waters to flow by, that he might cross over in safety: "At ille labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum." The succes

sion of debts and debtors will be as perpetual as the flow of the river.

We ought to be inspired by the recent brilliant example of France. Suffering unparalleled disasters, she was compelled to issue a vast volume of legal-tender notes in order to meet her obligations. But as soon as the great indemnity was paid, she addressed herself resolutely to the work of bringing her currency up to the standard of gold. During the last two years she has reduced her paper currency nearly 750,000,000 francs; and now it is substantially at par. Amidst all her disasters she has kept her financial credit untarnished. And this has been her strength and her safety. To meet the great indemnity, she asked her people for a loan of 3,000,000,000 francs; and twelve and a half times the amount was subscribed. In August, 1874, the American Minister at Paris said, in one of his despatches: "Though immense amounts were taken abroad, yet it seems they are all coming back to France, and are now being absorbed in small sums by the common people. The result will be, in the end, that almost the entire loan will be held in France. Every person in the whole country is wishing to invest a few hundred francs in the new loan, and it has reached a premium of four and one half to five per cent."

Our public faith is the symbol of our honor and the pledge of our future safety. By every consideration of national honor, of public justice, and of sound policy, let us stand fast in the resolution to restore our currency to the standard of gold.

THE DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR

SERVICE.

REMARKS MADE IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 7, 1876.

MR. GARFIELD made the following remarks in the Committee of the Whole, pending the bill making appropriations for the diplomatic and consular expenses of the government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1877, and for other purposes.

MR

R. CHAIRMAN, -I do not desire to detain the House long, nor to make anything like an elaborate argument on this bill; but I wish, if possible, to appeal to the judgment of the House as I would to a board of trade in an important business transaction. There is, I think, no bill on the whole list of appropriation bills more commercial in its character, more largely based upon business principles, than the bill which makes appropriations for our diplomatic and consular expenditures. There ought to be no party politics in such a bill. We ought to go to work upon it as though we were a board of railway directors making provision for the management of our road. And in what I shall say, I hope there will not be found a tinge of partisanship.

I will say, in the outset, that I sympathize with the Committee on Appropriations in all their laudable efforts to cut down expenditures. I know how hard that task is; I know how much of local pressure is brought to bear upon them from every quarter from interested parties who desire to swell appropriations; and I know, moreover, that every executive department tends to enlarge the field of expenditure within its jurisdiction, so that it is the business of that committee to resist pressure from all sides, pressure from the Administration, pressure from this

House, and pressure from their friends outside, who are always asking for more.

Now, I sympathize with the committee in their efforts at reform. I think there are several places where they can cut down very decidedly. Without stopping to indicate particulars, I will say generally that on the Fortification Bill, (though it was smaller the last year than ever before,) they can make and ought to make a good deal of reduction. In all that relates to public works, public buildings, rivers and harbors, whole establishments in the way of construction can be and ought to be considerably reduced. I have no doubt, also, that the same is true of many of our civil establishments here in Washington, that grew largely out of the war, and became greatly overgrown in consequence of the work which the war threw upon them. I think there ought to be a reduction of ten or fifteen millions below the appropriations of last session. But I am not a little surprised, I must confess, to find the bill now before us reported in its present shape by the Committee on Appropriations.

I believe every gentleman of intelligence on this floor will admit that the foreign service of the United States, the State Department, both as it is exhibited at home in its civil functions and abroad in its diplomatic and consular functions, has been for years the most economically conducted, the most honestly managed, the most carefully kept up, of any of our departments. All men of all parties in years past have given their testimony to that general truth. Now, when I remember that our diplomatic expenses, in recent years, have been only about a million and a third of dollars per annum for all our complicated relations, consular and diplomatic, it seems to me a surprising thing, considering the magnitude of our government and the extent of our relations to the world, that we have been able to keep them down to so low a figure.

The bill proposes, I believe, a reduction of $435,000 on an aggregate of about $1,350,000. A little more than $174,000 of this reduction, as I understand, it is proposed to make in the diplomatic service by cutting off six ministers, by reducing the salaries of others, and by reducing the contingent and other expenses relating to the diplomatic service. In the consular service the proposed reduction is about $260,000. The committee propose to abolish forty-four consulates and consular

agencies, and to make a reduction in contingent and other expenses connected with the consular service.

I will say but little in regard to the salaries of ministers abroad, or in regard to the general treatment that our foreign ministers receive in this bill. If gentlemen will examine the statutes as they stood prior to the act of 1855, they will find that our laws regulating the salaries of foreign ministers had stood unchanged since 1803. Yet in that period our ministers of the highest grade were receiving in some instances as high as $23,250 a year in salary and allowances, on account of the method then followed of giving an outfit and an infit, and in consequence of their remaining in service for a very short time. Under that system great evils grew up. A man would get his outfit, which was equivalent to one year's salary; he would stay at home six or eight months before starting for his post of duty, drawing pay from the date of accepting his commission; he would then go abroad and stay a few months, get his year's salary, together with an infit of $2,250, and come home. To show that I do not speak at random, I quote the following paragraph from a speech made by Mr. Mason, of Virginia, in the United States Senate, when the bill of 1855 was under discussion.

"Under the present system,· I cannot call it the present law, there being very little legislation applicable to the subject, the actual allowance to a minister plenipotentiary to any of the courts for the first year of his mission is $23,250. The amounts, very briefly, which make up that sum are, outfit, $9,000; salary, $9,000; infit, $2,250; and the average of the overlapping salary, $3,000; making $23,250 as the actual expenses to the government in the case of a foreign minister who remains abroad one year. If he remains abroad two years upon a full mission, under the present system, the actual expense to the government is $32,250, and the receipts of the minister, $16,250 [annually]. If he remains abroad four years, or one Presidential term, the actual expense to the government is $50,250, and the receipts of the minister are $12,562 [annually]."1

It was found that some of our representatives abroad were paid far too much, while the majority of those who served any great length of time were paid such small salaries that none but wealthy men could enter the service. And so, after a most elaborate debate, which gentlemen will find in the Globe for 1 Congressional Globe, February 24, 1855, p. 917.