Let me now turn to the still more important subject of the final extinction of our national debt. This great operation was successfully accomplished by using, seemingly, very inadequate means, aided, however, by steady accumulative action over a long interval of time. Our story begins a little outside of its own actual boundaries, and introduces us to the old interminable questions about the currency. Our monetary circulation, up to nearly the close of the nineteenth century, was mainly metallic; and there was a tacitly understood national monetary policy in keeping it so, and in preventing any very general substitution of paper. But the public's preference for the more handy and convenient paper was all this time very decided, and all that the public wanted was but the chance of getting it. The field was thus a tempting one to poach upon, and it was at last so seriously invaded by the paper of cheque banks, and by other issue contrivances, as to threaten the disappearance of most of the great metallic reserves. The public, in its readiness for the paper, would accept even the second class of it, offered by all and sundry issuers, if the first were not to be had.
The Government at length intervened. It seemed advisable that the State should supply, to its own profit as well as the public benefit, a suitable and undoubted paper. While free play was to be given to the public appetite in this direction, the exchanged specie was all to be held available, until, at any rate, experience had determined what proportion of it might be safely dispensed with, and thus turned to other and profitable account. By a modification of the postal notes system, an excellent smaller currency
