The proper time for the resumption is the time when wise preparation shall have ripened into perfect ability to accomplish the object with a certainty and ease that will inspire confidence and encourage the reviving of business.
The earliest time in which such a result can be brought about is best. Even when preparations shall have been matured, the exact date would have to be chosen with reference to the then existing state of trade and credit operations in our own country, and the course of foreign commerce and condition of exchanges with other nations. The specific measure and actual date are matters of details, having reference to ever-changing conditions. They belong to the domain of practical, administrative statesmanship. The captain of a steamer, about starting from New York to Liverpool, does not assemble a council over his ocean craft, and fix an angle by which to lash the rudder for the whole voyage. A human intelligence must be at the helm to discern the shifting forces of water and winds. A human mind must be at the helm to feel the elements day by day, and guide to a mastery over them. Such preparations are everything. Without them a legislative command fixing a day—an official promise fixing a day, are shams. They are worse. They are a snare and a delusion to all who trust them. They destroy all confidence among thoughtful men whose judgment will at last sway public opinion. An attempt to act on such a command, or such a promise without preparation, would end in a new suspension. It would be a fresh calamity, prolific of confusion, distrust, and distress.
That is to say, Congress has not sufficient intelligence to fix the date of resumption. They cannot fix the proper time. But a Democratic convention has human intelligence enough to know that the first day of January, 1879, is not the proper date. That convention knew what the state of trade and credit in our country and the course of foreign commerce and the condition of exchanges with other nations would be on the first day of January, 1879. Of course they did, or else they never would have had the impudence to declare that resumption would be impossible at that date.
The next extract is more luminous still:
The Government of the United States, in my opinion, can advance to a resumption of specie payments on its legal tender notes by gradual and safe processes tending to relieve the present business distress. If charged by the people with the administration of the executive office, I should deem it a duty so to exercise the powers with which it has or may be invested by Congress, as the best and soonest to conduct the country to that beneficent result.
Why did not this great statesman tell us of some "gradual and safe process"? He promises, if elected, to so administer the Government that it will soon reach a beneficent result. How is this to be done? What is his plan? Will he rely on "a human intelligence at the helm," or on "the central reservoir," or on some "gradual and safe process"?
I defy any man to read this letter and tell me what Mr. Tilden really proposes to do. There is nothing definite said. He uses such general terms, such vague and misty expressions, such unmeaning platitudes, that the real idea, if he had one, is lost in fog and mist.
Suppose I should, in the most solemn and impressive manner, tell you that the fluctuations caused in the vital stability of shifting financial operations, not to say speculations of the wildest character, cannot be rendered instantly accountable to a true financial theory based upon the great law that the superfluous is not a necessity, except in vague thoughts of persons unacquainted with the exigencies of the hour, and cannot, in the absence of a central reservoir of coin with a human intelligence at the head, hasten by any system of convertible bonds the expectation of public distrust, no matter how wisely planned and discreetly pursued, failure is assured whatever the real result may be.
Must we wage this war for the right forever? Is there no time when the soldiers of progress can rest? Will the bugles of the great army of civilization never sound even a halt? It does seem as though there can be no stop, no rest. It is in the world of mind as in the physical world. Every plant of value has to be cultivated. The land must be plowed, the seeds must be planted and watered. It must be guarded every moment. Its enemies crawl in the earth and fly in the air. The sun scorches it, the rain drowns it, the dew rusts it. He who wins it must fight. But the weeds they grow in spite of all. Nobody plows for them except accident. The winds sow the seeds, chance covers them, and they flourish and multiply. The sun cannot burn them—they laugh at rain and frost—they care not for birds and beasts. In spite of all they grow. It is the same in politics. A true Republican must continue to grow, must work, must think, must advance. The Republican party is the party of progress, of ideas, of work. To make a Republican you must have schools, books, papers. To make a Democrat, take all these away. Republicans are the useful; Democrats the noxious—corn and wheat against the dog fennel and Canada thistles.
Republicans of Maine, do not forget that each of you has two votes in this election—one in Maine and one in Indiana.