As early as Jan. 15 the _Evening Post_ had uttered its first warning against a reliance upon paper money. Naturally, the passage of the greenback legislation of Feb. 25, 1862, for the issue of $150,000,000 in legal-tender notes, dismayed it. It believed the law grossly unconstitutional, and was certain that it would be disastrous in effect. Secretary Chase wrote to Bryant, on Feb. 4, arguing for the bill, but in vain. “Your feelings of repugnance to the legal-tender clause can hardly be greater than my own,” said Chase; “but I am convinced that, as a temporary measure, it is indispensably necessary.” He thought that a minority of the people would not sustain the notes unless they were made a tender for debt, and that this minority could control the majority to all practical intents. But the _Evening Post_, like all the other New York journals save two, opposed the bill to the last. Bryant did not believe that the measure could be temporary, as Chase put it. In an editorial called “A Deluge at Hand,” he compared the law to the first breach made in one of the Holland dikes: In all the examples which the world has seen, the evil of an irredeemable paper currency runs its course as certainly as the smallpox or any other disease. The first effects are of such a nature that the remedy is never applied; there is no disposition to apply it. The inflation of the currency pleases a large class of persons by a rise of prices and an extraordinary activity in business. People buy to sell at higher prices; property passes rapidly from hand to hand; fortunes are made; the community is delirious with speculation. At such a time suppose Mr. Chase to step in and say: “My friends, this fun has been going on long enough; you must be tired by this time of speculation. Let us repeal the legal-tender clause in the Treasury-note bill and return to specie payments.” What sort of reception would this proposal meet? His prophecy was fulfilled. Successive issues of legal-tender notes followed, until the total reached $450,000,000; prices soared, and the cost of the war was immensely enhanced; and at one time $39 in gold would buy $100 in currency. The _Evening Post_, it may be added, was the first newspaper to suggest the issue of interest-bearing banknotes as an expedient for the gradual contraction of the currency, a measure Congress adopted in March, 1863.