The work of putting our finances upon a sound basis, difficult as it may seem, will appear easier when we recall the financial operations of the Government since 1866.  On the 30th day of June of that year we had outstanding demand liabilities in the sum of $728,868,447.41.  On the 1st of January, 1879, these liabilities had been reduced to $443,889,495.88.  Of our interest-bearing obligations, the figures are even more striking.  On July 1, 1866, the principal of the interest-bearing debt of the Government was $2,332,331,208.  On the 1st day of July, 1893, this sum had been reduced to $585,137,100, or an aggregate reduction of $1,747,294,108.  The interest-bearing debt of the United States on the 1st day of December, 1897, was $847,365,620.  The Government money now outstanding (December 1) consists of $346,681,016 of United States notes, $107,793,280 of Treasury notes issued by authority of the law of 1890, $384,963,504 of silver certificates, and $61,280,761 of standard silver dollars.

With the great resources of the Government, and with the honorable example of the past before us, we ought not to hesitate to enter upon a currency revision which will make our demand obligations less onerous to the Government and relieve our financial laws from ambiguity and doubt.

The brief review of what was accomplished from the close of the war to 1893, makes unreasonable and groundless any distrust either of our financial ability or soundness; while the situation from 1893 to 1897 must admonish Congress of the immediate necessity of so legislating as to make the return of the conditions then prevailing impossible.

There are many plans proposed as a remedy for the evil.  Before we can find the true remedy we must appreciate the real evil.  It is not that our currency of every kind is not good, for every dollar of it is good; good because the Government’s pledge is out to keep it so, and that pledge will not be broken.  However, the guaranty of our purpose to keep the pledge will be best shown by advancing toward its fulfillment.

The evil of the present system is found in the great cost to the Government of maintaining the parity of our different forms of money, that is, keeping all of them at par with gold.  We surely cannot be longer heedless of the burden this imposes upon the people, even under fairly prosperous conditions, while the past four years have demonstrated that it is not only an expensive charge upon the Government, but a dangerous menace to the National credit.

It is manifest that we must devise some plan to protect the Government against bond issues for repeated redemptions.  We must either curtail the opportunity for speculation, made easy by the multiplied redemptions of our demand obligations, or increase the gold reserve for their redemption.  We have $900,000,000 of currency which the Government by solemn enactment has undertaken to keep at par with gold.  Nobody is obliged to