Proceedings at the Mass Meeting of Citizens in the Cooper Institute, New York, Tuesday Evening, March 24, 1874, on National Finances; Speeches

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1874 edition. Excerpt: ...but honor to the cause for which they fought. They dreaded such failure when the stern, hard duties of restoring the losses of the war should have come upon us. Yet, knowing that kingdoms and empires had thus failed, that every other nation that had ever issued promises in the place of dollars, or of other coined money, had_failed to redeem them--knowing the dangers, they yet trusted a free people, and believed that we should prove an exception, and that in this, as in other ways, we should become an example and a leader among the nations. Shall we prove lalse to this high faith? Are we to disgrace ourselves and them? Are we to dishonor the dead? Shall the act which Lincoln signed to save the nation prove its ruin? Never! The ignorant, the depraved, and the incompetent men who have failed in these past years to dedicate the abundant revenues that the people have poured so lavishly into their hands, to the honest, prompt, and true payment of the demand debt represented by the greenbacks, have disgraced and dishonored the great men by whose acts the nation was saved, and have converted this legal-tender promise into a lie and a cheat. By its continued and enforced use they pick the pockets of the people and steal from the laborer a portion of the fruit of his labor, making him no return. Some honest bat ignorant legislators have undertaken to rebuke those who call the greenback a lie, and have tried to hold them up to public scorn, because they say we cast obloquy upon one of the great war instruments by which the nation was saved. We honor the sword and the rifle which our soldiers used, when laid away as trophies; but if they had been placed in the hands of highwaymen when their righteous work had ended, and had been used by them to rob us on the...