By the passage of the so-called "Credit-strengthening Act," in March, 1869, it was provided that all bonds of the government, except in cases where the law authorizing the issue of any such obligation has expressly provided that the same may be paid in lawful money, or other currency than gold and silver, should be payable in coin. This act was denounced by both Morton and Stevens, as a fraud upon the people, in that it made a new contract for the benefit of the bondholder. The injustice of the act could have been determined upon the plainest principles of equity: if the bonds were payable in coin, there was no need for its passage; if they were not so payable, there could be no excuse for it. If there existed a doubt sufficiently strong to require such an act, it was clearly an injustice to ignore the rights of the many in the interests of the few. But the men who had not scrupled to send rag-money to the soldiers in the trenches, and coin to the plotters in the rear, had no consciences to be troubled. They had dared to pay to the soldiers the money of the nation, and then rob them of two-thirds of it under color of law, and now needed only to search for methods, not for excuses. Political exigencies must be guarded against. The public must be hoodwinked, the soldier element placated with pension doles. The first essential was to stifle public discussion. Some fool-friends of the money power had introduced and pressed the bill early in 1868. There were still a few Representatives in Congress who had not bowed the knee to Baal, and they raised a vigorous protest against the iniquitous proposal. Discussion then might be fatal to both the scheme and the party, and Simon Cameron supplemented an already inodorous career by warning the Senate that this bill would seriously injure the Republican party, and that it should be laid aside until the excitement of a political campaign had subsided, and it could be discussed with the calmness with which we should view all great financial questions.