aim at nothing less than the complete effacement of the financial evils
that necessarily followed a state of civil war. We must endeavor to
apply the earliest remedy to the deranged state of the currency, and not
shrink from devising a policy which, without being oppressive to the
people, shall immediately begin to effect a reduction of the debt, and,
if persisted in, discharge it fully within a definitely fixed number of
years.

It is our first duty to prepare in earnest for our recovery from the
ever-increasing evils of an irredeemable currency without a sudden
revulsion, and yet without untimely procrastination. For that end we
must each, in our respective positions, prepare the way. I hold it the
duty of the Executive to insist upon frugality in the expenditures, and
a sparing economy is itself a great national resource. Of the banks to
which authority has been given to issue notes secured by bonds of the
United States we may require the greatest moderation and prudence, and
the law must be rigidly enforced when its limits are exceeded. We may
each one of us counsel our active and enterprising countrymen to be
constantly on their guard, to liquidate debts contracted in a paper
currency, and by conducting business as nearly as possible on a system
of cash payments or short credits to hold themselves prepared to return
to the standard of gold and silver. To aid our fellow-citizens in the
prudent management of their monetary affairs, the duty devolves on us to
diminish by law the amount of paper money now in circulation. Five years
ago the bank-note circulation of the country amounted to not much more
than two hundred millions; now the circulation, bank and national,
exceeds seven hundred millions. The simple statement of the fact
recommends more strongly than any words of mine could do the necessity
of our restraining this expansion. The gradual reduction of the currency
is the only measure that can save the business of the country from