The simple effect of my proposition, if adopted, will be to keep the circulation to a dollar where it is. If no new banks are started, no greenbacks are withdrawn, and if banks are started anywhere, then an amount of greenbacks must be withdrawn equal to the amount of national bank bills put in circulation. Should the whole $100,000,000 be taken we will be just $100,000,000 nearer to specie payments than we are to-day, ... and in the meantime the amount of national currency will not be changed in the slightest degree. MR. SUMNER: There is salvation in that. MR. CHANDLER: Of course there is salvation in it; that is why I offer it. All proposals made at the time to increase the aggregate paper circulation he resisted, saying: That is a step in the wrong direction.... If you let it go out that this is to be the policy of Congress, you will see gold go up immediately, ... because it will show that the Congress of the United States is in favor of expansion instead of a reduction of the currency. After the panic of 1873, when there was such a universal clamor for further inflation, and scores of propositions were introduced to add many millions to the existing volume of "greenbacks" and of bank notes, Mr. Chandler again insisted at all proper opportunities that resumption was the most essential step toward financial soundness, and that the substitution of bank notes for "greenbacks" would aid greatly both in reaching and in maintaining specie payment. On Feb. 18, 1874, he offered an amendment to a pending bill, directing "the Secretary of the Treasury to retire and destroy one dollar in 'legal tender' notes for each and every dollar of additional issue of bank notes," and spoke upon this proposition at length. He did not urge it as a complete remedy for the existing situation (contraction and resumption would alone furnish that), but he said: This is a step in the right direction. In 1865 I advocated upon this floor the substitution of bank notes for greenbacks as a step toward the resumption of specie payments, and a rapid step toward that resumption. I am now simply advocating what I advocated then. Mr. Chandler's wishes on this subject were not gratified at that time nor during his life, but before his death he saw the demand that the Treasury should cease to be a bank of issue approved by the soundest financial sentiment of the country. His belief, that the paper money of the Union should be furnished by commercial institutions operating under properly regulated governmental supervision, that is, by the national banking system perfected and enlarged, has been long held by the ablest and clearest students of monetary problems in the United States; it is to-day constantly growing in popular strength, and the result it aims at will form part of any durable settlement of "the currency question."