Let it be understood that no repudiator of one farthing
of our public debt will be trusted in public place, and it will go
far toward strengthening a credit which ought to be the best in
the world, and will ultimately enable us to replace the debt with
bonds bearing less interest than we now pay. To this should be
added a faithful collection of the revenue, a strict
accountability to the Treasury for every dollar collected, and the
greatest practicable retrenchment in expenditure in every
department of Government.
When we compare the paying capacity of the country now, with the
ten States in poverty from the effects of war, but soon to emerge,
I trust, into greater prosperity than ever before, with its paying
capacity twenty-five years ago, and calculate what it probably
will be twenty-five years hence, who can doubt the feasibility of
paying every dollar then with more ease than we now pay for
useless luxuries? Why, it looks as though Providence had bestowed
upon us a strong box in the precious metals locked up in the
sterile mountains of the far West, and which we are now forging
the key to unlock, to meet the very contingency that is now upon
us.
Ultimately it may be necessary to insure the facilities to reach
these riches and it may be necessary also that the General
Government should give its aid to secure this access; but that
should only be when a dollar of obligation to pay secures
precisely the same sort of dollar to use now, and not before.
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