are not so likely to take currency insurance into consideration in fixing their selling prices; but to whatever amount the cost price of their goods has been enhanced by the necessity of insurance against currency fluctuations, on that same amount they estimate and add for interest and profits; the total enhancement of prices falling ultimately on the consumer, who, of necessity, can rarely know the elements of the cost of the article he purchases. Q. So Mr. Webster, then, in his remark, which has become almost a proverb, that "of all contrivances for cheating the laboring classes, none has been more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money," must have been thoroughly cognizant of the nature of such transactions? A. Most undoubtedly; for such transactions are the inevitable consequence of using as a medium of exchange a variable, irredeemable currency. The illustration above given, therefore, in the place of being imaginary, is based on the actual condition of business at the present time--January, 1876. [18] In 1864, a ship was built in New York, at the time when labor and materials, reckoned in currency, had touched their highest prices. In 1870, another ship was built in the same place and on the same model--like the former in every particular. It was expected that, as wages and the cost of materials were less in 1870 than in 1864, the cost of the latter ship would be much less than that of the former; but the result showed that this was not the case. [19] When the Japanese embassy visited the United States, in 1872, they were seriously advised to create, by some means, a national debt as soon as they returned home, and make use of it as a basis for the creation and issue of currency. [20] Machiavelli, in his "Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy," book ii., chap, iii., in explaining the great difference in the relative growth of the Roman and Spartan republics, relates that "Lycurgus, the founder of the Spartan republic, believing that nothing could more readily destroy his laws than the admixture of new inhabitants, did every thing possible to deter strangers from flocking thither. Besides denying them intermarriage, citizenship, and all other companionships (conversationi) that bring men together, he ordered that in his republic only leather (non-exportable) money should be used, so as to indispose all strangers to bring merchandise into Sparta, or to exercise any kind of art or industry there, so that the city never could increase in population." [21] Examination will show that the United States, for one-sixth part of their existence as a federated nation, have been in a state of war; and, for the future, there is no good reason for supposing that the country is to be any more exempt from the vicissitudes of nations than it has been in the past. With irredeemable paper, violation of plighted faith, gold demonetized and banished, in what condition is the nation for maintaining a great national struggle?