The free-silver heresy is about dead. It has cost this country, at to-day's price for silver, $170,000,000. The few saddened priests of this unhappy fetich who remain active find their disciples all rallying round the standard of currency reform. The report of the Secretary of the Treasury is a confession of national financial sins, and a profession of faith in sound money doctrines. Every business man will watch with keen interest the progress of a plan for the reform in our currency. You all know that the straight road is the retirement of the greenback and the Treasury note, and the withdrawal of the Government from the banking business, and you will naturally distrust any makeshift measures. The greenback is a war debt, and a debt that is now troublesome. We are funding and refunding it in gold daily, and are still paying it out as currency to come back after gold. Any scheme to sequestrate, to hide it under a bushel, or to put it under lock and key, is a shallow device. The way to retire it is to retire it. It has served its full purpose, and there never was a better time than now to call it in.
In twelve years all our Government debt matures. The national banking system based upon it must expire with it, unless existing laws are changed. This system has served the nation well. No one has ever lost a dollar by a national bank note. The system is worth preserving, and with a little more liberal treatment it can be made to serve until a currency based upon commercial credits and linked to a safety fund, a system which works so admirably in Canada, can be engrafted upon it. There is a great hurry to create such a system now on a basis of the partial sequestration of the greenback and the Treasury note, but the bottom principle is wrong. The Government should discourage a commercial credit currency based upon a public credit currency, which, in turn, rests upon a slender gold deposit, exposed to every holder of a Government demand note. A credit currency is a double-edged tool, and needs to be handled with great care. We have had so much crazy-quilt finance that I am sure that we want no more of it. We have been sorely punished for our financial sins in the past, and now that we are repentant, we want to get everything right before we go ahead with our full native energy. We have suffered from the distrust of the world, and then from our own distrust. In retracing our steps let us be sure that we are on solid ground, and make our "wampum" as good as the best there is in the world. [Applause.]
LORD HERSCHELL
GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES
[Speech of Lord Farrer Herschell at the 130th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, November 15, 1898. Lord Herschell was present in this country as President of the Joint High Commission appointed to arbitrate the dispute between Canada and the United States relative to the Bering Sea seal fisheries. Alexander E. Orr, President of the Chamber, proposed the toast to which Lord Herschell spoke: "The Future Relations between Great Britain and the United States—a determined union of heart and purpose will carry the forces of justice and humanity the world over.">[
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Chamber Of Commerce:—I assure you that I am most deeply sensible of the warm welcome that you have extended to me, and grateful for the manner in which you have received the words which were uttered introducing me to you. But I can assure you that I rejoiced to hear the cheers with which this toast was greeted, not merely because they were a compliment to myself, but because I was satisfied that you were regarding me rather in the character of a representative of my country, and that there rang in those cheers sentiments of good will to the country that I have the honor to represent to-night. [Applause.] And I heard in them something more than that—they indicated to me a conviction that in the continuance of good relations between your country and mine, there were involved blessings, priceless blessings, to the countries we love so well. [Applause.]
I can assure you that all my countrymen reciprocate the feeling which has been expressed; that they desire, as you do, that the cordial relationship should continue, and that they have toward the United States of America nothing but feelings of good will and a desire for its welfare and progress. [Applause.] I have said—all my countrymen. I ought, perhaps, not to have been so bold. There are some fools in all lands. [Laughter.] They are the product of every soil. No nation has a monopoly of them. [Laughter.] But with these exceptions, I can speak, I think, for all my countrymen. The echoes of those now distant events of a century and a quarter ago, which left much soreness behind them, have died away in England. [Applause.] We can rejoice as much as you rejoice to-day, in the fact that you are one of the leading nations of the world. [Applause.] And there is to me a peculiar interest in the fact that I, who have had the honor to fill the office of Lord Chancellor, should be here as the representative of my country engaged in negotiations between Great Britain and the United States. A century and a quarter ago or more, a predecessor of mine in that high office made a most unfortunately foolish prediction. He said, with reference to these (at that time) colonies: "If they withdraw their allegiance, we shall withdraw our protection; and then they will soon be overrun by the little States of Genoa and San Marino." [Laughter.] I am happy to say—I must say it for the credit of the office—that there was even then a distinguished lawyer who was to succeed the Lord Chancellor to whom I have referred, who made a speech at which to-day neither I nor any one else need blush. But I could not help thinking of those words when I reflected that I was here negotiating with the representatives of a mighty nation of seventy millions of people, who have not been overrun by the little Republics of Genoa and San Marino [laughter], although undoubtedly, in a sense very different from that which the speaker intended, you may have been overrun by the natives of some of the Italian towns. [Laughter.]
Gentlemen, there is to-day in my country, as in yours, a pride in the United States. We cannot forget that if you won your independence, if you achieved your liberties, if you laid the foundations of your constitution, if you prepared for such a nation as exists here to-day, you were at that time colonists of Great Britain. The men who laid the foundation stones of the United States, in which you to-day glory, were those who had gone out from amongst us, who had in the country of my birth imbibed for the most part their traditions of liberty, and their desire and determination to achieve it; and, therefore, with no misgiving, with nothing but a feeling of pride, we may rejoice in your success and in your progress. We long ago admitted the follies and the wrong-doings of those times, as freely as you could insist upon them yourselves. [Applause.]
I am not going to dwell upon that aspect of the case to-night, because I am quite aware that sometimes the ready admission of wrong-doing is rather irritating than soothing. [Laughter.] I remember once hearing a learned counsel, who was conducting the trial of a case before a judge of great ability but not of the best of tempers, put a question of a character such as to shock any one accustomed to be guided by the rigid rules of evidence. Strictly in confidence, I don't think he had the least idea that it was a wrong question, but the learned judge interposed and said: "That was an improper question, Mr. so and so." "Yes, my Lord, it was very improper." "Yes," said the judge, "you ought not to have put the question,—a most improper question." "Yes, sir; I ought not to have put it, a more improper question never was." And the more the judge reproached him the more submissive he became, until he drove the judge nearly mad. [Laughter.]