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1 Benjamin F. Butler, Speech of Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, upon His Bill to Authorize the Issue of a National Currency, to Assure Its Stability and Elasticity, Lessen the Interest on the Public Debt, and to Reduce the Rate of Interest, January, 1869 1 (1869)

handle is hein.tera/sbjfbnsa0001 and id is 1 raw text is: SIEECH OF lION: BENJA1MIN F. BUTLER, UPON HIS BILL To Authorize the Issue of a National Currency, to assuritlU Statflby anOJIasticity, lessen the Interest on the Public Debt, and redqtkhe H4ty of Istdst. JANUARY, 1869. Mr. SPEAKER: The currency of a highly com- mercial, expanding,industrious, and productive and free people, by which their values are meas- ured and exchanged, should be uniform, sound, cheap, stable, and elastic. Uniformity is that quality which gives the same value in every part thereof to the money of a country. This quality our present cur- rency possesses in a sufficient degree of per- fection. Soundness may be defined as certainty that the currency is so secured that it can never fail of exchangeability for equal intrinsic -values. No American permits himself to doubt but that our legal tenders and national bank notes, secured by the pledge of public faith, guaran- tiedbyall the resources and power of the coun- try, are to be made good to the extent of value printed on their face. Our present currency, therefore, possesses the quality of soundness for all purposes of internal business and trade. As to cheapness, all financial writers agree that a paper currency is the cheapest of all possible mediums of circulation, whether as regards the cost of its supply or of its wear and tear, or because of being non-producing capital while circulating from hand to hand. If gold and silver were used in its stead, or locked up as a basis for its redemption, they would be so much idle and dead capital doing duty as currency only, and the nation so using it would suffer the loss of interest on so much wasted capital. It is apparent that paper being but the sign or token of value yields no loss of interest upon itself as capital while used as currency. While, therefore, in these particulars, our present currency is cheap enough, yet there is another sense in which that term is sometimes used in relation to money, but more properly to capital, which our present currency wholly fails to satisfy, and which it will be necessary to examine hereafter. I refer to the enormous price at which money or capital is now fur- nished to the consumer or user. Stability of currency is, perhaps, the most important of all its attributes. It may be well enough defined as a quality of currency when used as a standard and measure of value which renders it unchangeable at all times as com- pared with itself. A measure of value should no more change than should the measures of length, quantity, or weight. It should be at all times one and the same. When all the property of a people is once adjusted to such a measure of value it is of comparatively little moment what that measure may be. To illustrate: we have two measures of weight, the pound troy and the pound avoir- dupois. We find no special inconvenience in their use, as the classes of objects submitted to their measure have remained unchanged for many years, and are bought and sold with regard to the difference between them, which also is invariable. So as to length. It is entirely unimportant whether we had adopted at first the imperial yard of Britain or the metre of France as a measure of length, provided we maintain it unchanged. In the sense in which we have defined sta- bility our present currency is greatly deficient. This arises from the fact that instead of being an unvarying standard of value of itself it is con- tinually measured by another standard, to wit, gold, which is itself variable. Further, our currency is still more fluctuated by empirical attempts, either of legislation or administra- tion, on the one hand to increase its value by bringing it nearer to gold, or on the otherbycom- binations of brokers and bankers to reduce or enhance its value for the purposes of specula- tion and unjust gain.

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