The Legal Tender Basis. President Grant said: “My own judgment is that a specie basis cannot be reached and maintained until our exports exclusive of gold pay for our imports, interest due abroad, and other specie obligations, or so nearly as to leave an appreciable accumulation of the precious metals in the country from the product of our mines.”—_Message, Dec. 1, 1873._ Plentiful experience has demonstrated that a paper money based upon the authority, faith and credit of the government and made by law a full legal tender for all debts will serve all the purposes of a staple circulating medium as effectually as gold itself. The effectiveness of legal-tender paper depends upon two circumstances: 1. Government can by law compel the people to take it in satisfaction of private debts, by refusing to enforce contracts payable in any other kind of money. 2. The government may receive such legal-tender paper in satisfaction of all kinds of taxes and duties, thus giving such money a positive value equal to gold. The United States Supreme Court, in the celebrated Greenback cases, says: “Making these notes legal tender gave them new uses (or functions), and it requires no argument to prove the value of things as in proportion to the uses to which they may be applied.”—_12 Wallace Reports, p. 519._ Benjamin Franklin, defending the Pennsylvania colonial paper money before a committee of the English Parliament, in 1764, said: “On the whole no method has hitherto been found to establish a medium of trade, in lieu of coin, equal in all its advantages to bills of credit founded on sufficient taxes for discharging it at the end of the time, and in the meantime made a general legal tender.” Thomas Jefferson, in his letter to Mr. Epps, said of government paper money: “It is the only resource which can never fail them, and it is an abundant one for every necessary purpose. Treasury bills, bottomed on taxes, bearing or not bearing interest, as may be found necessary, thrown into circulation, will take the place of so much gold or silver.” President Jackson, in his message, 1829, said: “I submit to the wisdom of the legislature whether a national one [currency] founded on the credit of the government and its resources might not be devised.” John C. Calhoun, in a speech in the United States Senate, December 18, 1837, said: