I mention these as expedients, having the authority of financial names, calculated to operate in the same direction, without violent change or spasmodic action. Under their mild and beneficent influence the currency would be gradually reduced, so that the final step, when taken, would be hardly felt. With so great an object in view, I do not doubt its accomplishment at an early day, if the Nation only wills it. “Where there is a will, there is a way”; and never was this proverb truer than on this occasion. To my mind it is clear, that, when the Nation wills a currency in coin, then must this victory over the Rebellion be won,--provided always that there is no failure in those other things on which I have also dwelt as the _conditions precedent_ of this final victory. * * * * * How vain it is to expect Financial Reconstruction until Political Reconstruction has been completed I have already shown. How vain to expect specie payments until the Nation has once more gained its natural vigor, and it has become _one_ in reality as in name! Let this be, and the Nation will be like a strong man, in the full enjoyment of all his forces, coping with the trials of life. There must also be peace within our borders, so that there shall be no discord between President and Congress. Therefore, so long as Andrew Johnson is President, the return to specie payments is impossible. So long as a great party, called Democratic, better now called Rebel, wars on that Political Reconstruction which Congress has organized, there can be no specie payments. So long as any President, or any political party, denies the Equal Rights of the freedman, it is vain to expect specie payments. Whoso would have equity must do equity; and now, if you would have specie payments, you must do this great equity. The rest will follow. When General Grant said, “Let us have peace,” he said also, “Let us have specie payments.” Among all the blessed gifts of peace there is none more certain.