I believe all the provisions I have suggested should be embodied in our laws if we are to enjoy a complete reinstatement of a sound financial condition.  They need not interfere with any currency scheme providing for the increase of the circulating medium through the agency of national or State banks that may commend itself to the Congress, since they can easily be adjusted to such a scheme.  Objection has been made to the issuance of interest-bearing obligations for the purpose of retiring the noninterest-bearing legal-tender notes.  In point of fact, however, these notes have burdened us with a large load of interest, and it is still accumulating.  The aggregate interest on the original issue of bonds, the proceeds of which in gold constituted the reserve for the payment of these notes, amounted to $70,326,250 on January 1, 1895, and the annual charge for interest on these bonds and those issued for the same purpose during the last year will be $9,145,000, dating from January 1, 1895.

While the cancellation of these notes would not relieve us from the obligations already incurred on their account, these figures are given by way of suggesting that their existence has not been free from interest charges and that the longer they are outstanding, judging from the experience of the last year, the more expensive they will become.

In conclusion I desire to frankly confess my reluctance to issuing more bonds in present circumstances and with no better results than have lately followed that course.  I can not, however, refrain from adding to an assurance of my anxiety to cooperate with the present Congress in any reasonable measure of relief an expression of my determination to leave nothing undone which furnishes a hope for improving the situation or checking a suspicion of our disinclination or disability to meet with the strictest honor every national obligation.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

[Footnote 14:  See pp. 553-556.]

EXECUTIVE MANSION, January 30, 1895.

To the House of Representatives: 

In compliance with a resolution of the House of Representatives of the 28th instant, the Senate concurring, I herewith return the bill (H.R. 6186) entitled “An act to pension Maria Davis.”

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, February 4, 1895.

To the Senate of the United States: 

In response to the resolution of the Senate dated December 6, 1894, requesting that copies of correspondence in regard to the claim of Antonio Maximo Mora against the Government of Spain exchanged since my last message to the Senate on the same subject, dated June 20, 1894,[15] be communicated to it if not incompatible with the public interests, I transmit herewith a report of the Secretary of State, inclosing copies of further correspondence exchanged between the Governments of the United States and Spain since the date of my last message to the Senate, December 11, 1894.[16]