The report also shows a complete history of the workings of the Department for the last year, and contains recommendations for reforms and for legislation which I concur in, but can not comment on so fully as I should like to do if space would permit, but will confine myself to a few suggestions which I look upon as vital to the best interests of the whole people—­coining within the purview of “Treasury;” I mean specie resumption.  Too much stress can not be laid upon this question, and I hope Congress may be induced, at the earliest day practicable, to insure the consummation of the act of the last Congress, at its last session, to bring about specie resumption “on and after the 1st of January, 1879,” at furthest.  It would be a great blessing if this could be consummated even at an earlier day.

Nothing seems to me more certain than that a full, healthy, and permanent reaction can not take place in favor of the industries and financial welfare of the country until we return to a measure of values recognized throughout the civilized world.  While we use a currency not equivalent to this standard the world’s recognized standard, specie, becomes a commodity like the products of the soil, the surplus seeking a market wherever there is a demand for it.

Under our present system we should want none, nor would we have any, were it not that customs dues must be paid in coin and because of the pledge to pay interest on the public debt in coin.  The yield of precious metals would flow out for the purchase of foreign productions and leave the United States “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” because of wiser legislation on the subject of finance by the nations with whom we have dealings.  I am not prepared to say that I can suggest the best legislation to secure the end most heartily recommended.  It will be a source of great gratification to me to be able to approve any measure of Congress looking effectively toward securing “resumption.”

Unlimited inflation would probably bring about specie payments more speedily than any legislation looking to redemption of the legal-tenders in coin; but it would be at the expense of honor.  The legal-tenders would have no value beyond settling present liabilities, or, properly speaking, repudiating them.  They would buy nothing after debts were all settled.

There are a few measures which seem to me important in this connection and which I commend to your earnest consideration: 

A repeal of so much of the legal-tender act as makes these notes receivable for debts contracted after a date to be fixed in the act itself, say not later than the 1st of January, 1877.  We should then have quotations at real values, not fictitious ones.  Gold would no longer be at a premium, but currency at a discount.  A healthy reaction would set in at once, and with it a desire to make the currency equal to what it purports to be.  The merchants, manufacturers, and tradesmen of every calling could do business on a fair margin of profit, the money to be received having an unvarying value.  Laborers and all classes who work for stipulated pay or salary would receive more for their income, because extra profits would no longer be charged by the capitalists to compensate for the risk of a downward fluctuation in the value of the currency.