_Be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives_, That the amount of "legal tender" treasury notes authorized by law shall never be increased. On the following day he called up this resolution, and said: The effect of the recommendation (to issue $300,000,000 of "legal tender" notes) has been most disastrous. The mere recommendation, without any action of Congress on the subject, has created such a panic, and has so convinced the moneyed centers of the world that we are to be flooded with this paper, that gold has risen in price from two and three-quarters to seven per cent. premium. National credit is precisely like individual credit. It is based, first, on the ability to pay; and, second, upon the high and honorable principle which would induce the payment of a liability. When the proposition to issue treasury notes was first made, it was received with great apprehension by Congress and by the nation.... There was at that time a vacuum for $50,000,000 that must be filled from some source.... I then believed that $100,000,000 was requisite, and that $100,000,000 was enough. I believe so now. When you issue $100,000,000 of currency you must either find a vacuum or you must create one for it. A hundred millions in addition to the existing circulation would at any time create great disturbance in the financial condition of this country.... The moment you authorize the issue of $300,000,000 your coin will rise to ten or twelve per cent., and your notes will full to 90 or 85. The result will be that the government will be paying just so much more for every article it purchases than it would if you kept your circulating notes at or about the value of coin. Again, the moment you reduce the value of these notes, even to the point at which they now stand, even to seven per cent. discount, you drive out of circulation the coin of the country. The temptation is too strong to be resisted to use something else besides coin for change and for small circulation. Are we to be reduced to a shin-plaster circulation, as is the case to-day all through the South? That will be the result if you force upon the country an amount of circulating notes beyond its requirements.... I consider it a duty we owe to the country, a duty we owe to ourselves, to proclaim that under no circumstances shall a currency, irredeemable in coin, beyond the present issue of $150,000,000, be thrust upon the money markets of the country.