“It is a discretion kindred to that under which the _Habeas Corpus_ is suspended, so that citizens are arrested without the forms of law,--kindred to that under which an extensive territory is declared to be in a condition of insurrection, so that all business with its inhabitants is suspended,--kindred to that, which unquestionably exists, to obtain soldiers, if necessary, by draft or conscription instead of the free offering of volunteers,--kindred to that under which private property is taken for public uses,--and kindred, also, to that undoubted discretion which sanctions the completest exercise of the transcendent right of self-defence.”[238] As a war measure, it should cease with the war, or so soon thereafter as practicable. It should not be continued a day beyond positive exigency. While the war lasted, it was a necessity, as the war itself. Its continuance now prolongs into peace this belligerent agency, and projects its disturbing influence into the most distant places. Like war, whose greatest engine it was, it is the cause of incalculable evil. Like war, it troubles the entire Nation, deranges business, and demoralizes the people. As I hate war, so do I hate all its incidents, and long to see them disappear. Already in these remarks I have pictured the financial anarchy of our country, the natural reflection of the political; but the strongest illustration is in a disordered currency, which is present to everybody with a dollar in his pocket. The derangement of business may be seen at home and abroad. It is not merely derangement; it is dislocation. Everything is out of joint. Business has its disease also, showing itself in opposite conditions: shrunk at times, as with paralysis; swollen at times to unhealthy proportions, as with _elephantiasis_. The first condition of business is stability, which is only another form of security; but this is impossible, when nobody can tell from day to day the value of the currency. It may change in a night. The reasonable contract of to-day may become onerous beyond calculation to-morrow. There is no fixed standard. The seller is afraid to sell, the buyer afraid to buy. Nobody can sell or buy a farm, nobody can build or mortgage a house, except at an unnatural hazard. Salaries and all fixed incomes suffer. The pay of every soldier in the army, every sailor in the navy, every office-holder from the President to the humblest postmaster, is brought under this tyrannical influence. Harder still, innocent pensioners, wards of the Nation, must bear the same doom. Maimed soldiers, bereaved widows, helpless orphans, whose cup is already full, are compelled to see their scanty dole shrink before their sight till it seems ready to vanish in smoke.