In presenting this series of measures, I am penetrated by the conviction, that, if adopted, they cannot fail to bring all the national obligations to a par with coin, and then specie payments will be resumed without effort. Our bonds will be among the most popular in the market. No longer below par, they will continue to advance, while the national credit lifts its head unimpeached, unimpeachable. Under this influence the remainder of our outstanding debt may be refunded in Fifteen-Fifties at four and a half per cent., if not in Twenty-Sixties at four per cent. There will then be sixteen hundred and twenty-five millions refunded at an average of less than four and a half per cent., and the whole debt, including the irredeemable sixes of 1881, at an average of less than five per cent., while all will be within our control five years earlier than in the maximum period proposed by the Secretary of the Treasury.
One immediate consequence of these measures would be the relief of the people from eighty to one hundred millions of taxation, while there would remain a surplus revenue of two millions a month applicable to the reduction of the debt, being more than enough to liquidate the whole prior to the maturity of the new obligations, if it were thought advisable to complete the liquidation at so early a day. The country will breathe freer, business will be more elastic, life will be easier, as the assurance goes forth that no heavy taxation shall be continued in order to pay the debt in eleven years, as is now proposed, nor in fifteen years, nor in twenty years. By the present measures, while retaining the privilege of paying the debt within twenty years, we shall secure the alternative of sixty years, and at a largely reduced interest,--leaving the opportunity of paying it at any intermediate time, according to the best advantage of the country. With diminished taxation and resources increasing immeasurably, the national debt will cease to be a burden,--becoming “fine by degrees and beautifully less” until it gradually ceases to exist.
In making this statement, I offer my contribution to the settlement of a great question. If I am wrong, what I have said will soon be forgotten. Meanwhile I ask for it your candid attention, adding one further remark, with which I shall close. I never have doubted, I cannot doubt, the ease with which the transition to specie payments may be accomplished, especially as compared with the ominous fears which this simple proposition seems to excite in certain quarters. We are gravely warned against it as a period of crisis. I do not believe there will be anything to which this term can be reasonably applied. Like every measure of essential justice, it will at once harmonize with the life of the community, and people will be astonished at the long postponement of an act so truly beneficent in all its influences, so important to the national character, and so congenial with the business interests of the country.