INVITATION.

OFFICE OF THE HONEST MONEY, LEA, December 20, 1THWEST, }

To the Hon. James A. Garfield:

CHICAGO, ILL.,

DEAR SIR―Having been appointed at a recent meeting of the Executive Committee of the Honest Money League of the Northwest to make arrangements to celebrate the event of the resumption of specie payments by a public meeting in the city of Chicago, we beg to invite you to address the gentlemen of the Honest Money League, whom we represent, and other citizens of Chicago and the Northwest, at such time after January 1, 1879, as may be most agreeable to yourself.

We remain, very truly and respectfully yours,

WASHINGTON, D. C., December 23, 1878.

M. L. Scudder, Thomas A. Bones and Thomas M. Nichol, Executive Committee Honest Money League :

GENTLEMEN-I am in receipt of your favor of the 20th instant, inviting me to address a meeting of the Honest Money League of the Northwest, to be called for the celebration of the "resumption of specie payments." I take pleasure in accepting your invitation, and will suggest the evening of January 2, 1879, if agreeable to you.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

J. A. GARFIELD.

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW CITIZENS :

The Resumption of Specie Payments closes the most memorable epoch of our history, since the birth of the Union. Eighteen hundred-sixty-one and eighteen hundred-seventy-nine, are the opposite shores of that turbulent sea, whose storms so seriously threatened, with shipwreck, the prosperity, the honor, and the life of the Nation. But the horrors and dangers of the middle passage have, at last, been mastered; and, out of the night and tempest, the Republic has landed on the shore of this new year, bringing with it union and liberty, honor and peace.

Battles are

We have met to-night to celebrate the close of the war. never the end of war; for the dead must be buried and the cost of the conflict must be be paid.

The union men of eighteen hundred-sixty-one enlisted for the whole war. They served on the field of battle until the last rebel flag went down in surrender; they served in the field of legislation, and at the bollot box, until the last slave was free and the last of the seceding states re-entered the circle of the Union; they served in the public councils until the perils of our foreign relations were ended by honorable arbitration; they have served during the fierce trials of the public faith; and they will not be mustered out until the equal rights of all citizens are acknowledged and secured; until the pension of the last disabled soldier of the Union is faithfully paid, and the last war obligation of the government is honorably redeemed.

If the Resumption now declared by law be maintained against all assaults then, indeed, so far as our finances are concerned, the war for the Union is ended; the victory is complete.

Will our great sovereign, the people of all these States, make the decree irreversible? Will Resumption be maintained?

Believing that, in the long run, the matured and deliberate judgement of this nation is honest and intelligent, I answer, “yes,” it will be maintained; and for two reasons. First, because national honesty, good government, and the prosperity of all our people demand it; and Second, because we are able to maintain it. The defence of these positions will be the theme of this address.

PUBLIC FAITH-THE BASIS OF PROSPERITY.

To the thoughtful business men assembled here to-night, whose genius and industry have made this city the great commercial centre of the northwest, I need not argue the proposition that the sanctity of contracts is the foundation of all industrial posperity. In the complex and delicately adjusted relations of modern society, confidence in promises lawfully made is the life-blood of trade and commerce. It is the vital air which labor breaths. It is the light which shines on the pathway of prosperity. The betrayal of one great business trust by a single private citizen may beggar a thousand families, and paralyze the industry of half a city.

An act of bad faith on the part of a State or munici] al corporation, like poison in the blood, will transmit its curse to succeedi g generations. Examples of this are not wanting. An eminent citizen of Mississippi, a gentleman of national reputation, recently declined an important and honorable business mission to Europe, in behalf of the Southern Board of Trade, on the ground that his usefulness would be seriously impaired by the fact that Europeans still charge Mississippi with financial bad faith in her legislation of 1851. Thus, a single act of repudiation has cast its blighting shadow across a quarter of a century, still clouds the prosperity of a great State, and cripples the influence of its worthiest citizens.

But bad faith on the part of an individual, a city, or even a State, is a small evil in comparison with the calamities which follow bad faith on the part of a sovereign government. The United States is still a debtor nation, mainly, it is true, a debtor to our own people, but also, to a great extent, a debtor to the people of other nations. We are still in the market, soliciting loans with which to re-fund our great debt at a lower rate of interest. Every dollar thus re-funded reduces the annual burden of interest; and, to that extent, the government ceases to be a competitor of private citizens in securing loans. Any act of bad faith, therefore, tends to prevent refunding, tends to prevent the reduction of the public burdens, and keeps up the rate of interest, both public and private.

Our bonds have become the basis of private interests, involving hundreds of millions of dollars. The vast aggregate of investments by people of small means in savings banks, in fire, marine, and life insurance and the estates of thousands of widows and orphans depend largely for their value upon the security and steady value of government obligations; and any law or policy which tends to depreciate these obligations, is communicated through all the channels of private business, carrying loss and disaster to millions of citizens.

THE CURRENCY AND THE PUBLIC FAITH.

At the risk of repeating what may be familiar to every one, let us consider the relation of the green back to the public faith. Whatever new theories of currency may have sprung up since 1862, it will not be denied as a fact of history and law that, the greenback was a loan without interest, forced upon the people by the overmastering necessities of the war. Its issue as a legal tender for private debts was acknowledged at the time, to be an act of doubtful constitutionality, and justified only on the plea of inexorable necessity. The measure was adopted with great hesitation, by a small majority, and against the protest and warning of many able and patriotic Senators and Representatives. The law was acknowledged by its supporters, to be a radical departure from the traditions, the theory and practice of our government. Its strongest supporters acknowledged the great danger of the experiment, and threw around it every safeguard against the evils it would inflict. They embodied in the law, and stamped upon the face of every greenback, this solemn promise: "The United States will pay." They provided a method by which the notes should be funded and ultimately redeemed. They did not propose to create a permanent system of paper money. They declared that the measure was to be a temporary one-the "Medicine of the Constiiution, and not its daily bread." They aserted, again and again, that the money of the constitution was coin, not paper. The greenback itself, was a promise to pay coin; but the date of payment was not fixed. It was a government due-bill; and the only excuse in morals or in law for not paying it on demand, was inability to pay. The moment the governnent was able to pay, refusal became dishonor and reproduced its injustice in every business interest—public and private.

But the unredeemed greenback produced evils far greater than those which resulted from the ordinary refusal to pay a debt. Besides being a debt, it was a legal tender currency, and its excessive volume expelled real money from all the channels of internal trade, destroyed the old measure of value, and substituted in its place a standard whose value fluctuated every day and every hour during the seventeen years of suspension. On account of its twofold character as debt and currency, the value of the greenback was changed by every military and political event which affected the fortunes of the war. The march of a hostile army to the near neighborhood of the national capitol, in 1864, reduced the market value of the greenback forty per cent. in a single week. The same year a futile attempt of Congress to abolish the premium on gold, by a penal law, caused an equally violent fluctuation. At first the greenback was received at par with coin; but later every increase of issue reduced its market value. In 1864 the volume was incrcased one hundred and ninety millions, and the coin value of the whole mass became one hundred and seventy-five millions less than before the increase.

Through a series of innumerable and fitful fluctuations, it fell from par to thirty-eight cents on the dollar, reaching its lowest point on the

fifth of July, 1864. By a series of changes. equally irregular, it has returned through an ascending scale of fifteen years, to par.

No arithmetic can compute the injustice and loss which these fluctuations have inflicted upon the people and business of this country. The chief mischief, resulted from two unequal and varying qualities of the greenback as a currency: Its debt-paying and its purchasing power. The first was arbitrarily fixed by Congress at one hundred cents on the dollar; But the second was controlled by laws which no human legislation can set aside-the laws of value; and the value of the greenback as a purchasing power suffered all the changes of the market.

In July, 1864, a citizen who had loaned his neighbor a hundred dollars in coin three years before, was compelled by law to accept as a discharge of the debt a handful of paper notes which he could purchase for thirty-eight dollars in coin. That is, the same note which paid a debt of one hundred cents, would buy in the market only thirty-eight cents worth of merchandise, valued in real money. This difference between its debt-paying power and its purchasing power, carried confusion and injustice into every department of business.

During the whole period of decline, the creditor was wronged by underpayment; and during the whole period of appreciation, the debtor was wronged by being compelled to make overpayment.

During the seventeen years of suspension the payment of every debt inflicted a wrong, either upon the creditor or the debtor; and thus the whole machinery of credit was converted into an engine of injustice. This will always happen when the two fnnctions of currency are of unequal value.

THE MISTAKE OF 1865.

The first great opportunity for putting an end to these evils occurred soon after the close of the war. Probably at no other time in our history was the per capita average of private indebtedness so small as in 1865. Private debts had been paid-in depreciated paper; the government had become the great borrower; and had loaned nearly all the surplus capital of the country.

Two millions of hardy, enterprising men had just been mustered out of the lately hostile armies, and were ready again to become producers of wealth. It was a matter of the utmost importance that the fruits of their labor should be safe when earned, and that ventures in business should be made as free as possible from violent artificial fluctuations. The volume of currency then outstanding was nearly four times as great as had ever existed at any one time before the war. It amounted to nearly eight hundred millions of paper obligations, in various forms, endowed with the quality of legal tender. Even in the midst of the war, this volume was known to be far to great for financial safety. But on the return of peace, when the government ceased to be a great consumer and the payments from the treasury were reduced sixty per cent. in a single year, it was almost uni