to the New-York Legislature of January 5, 1875, the suggestion was made that:

"The Federal Government is bound to redeem every portion of its issues which the public do not wish to use. Having assumed to monopolize the supply of currency and enacted exclusions against everybody else, it is bound to furnish all which the wants of business require." * * . * "The system should passively allow the volume of circulating credits to ebb and flow, according to the ever-changing wants of business. It should imitate, as closely as possible, the natural laws of trade, which it has superseded by artificial contrivances." And in a similar discussion in my Message of January 4, 1876, it was said that resumption should be effected "by such measures as would keep the aggregate amount of the currency self-adjusting during all the process, without creating, at any time, an artificial scarcity, and without exciting the public imagination with alarms which impair confidence, contract the whole large machinery of credit, and disturb the natural operations of business."

"Public economies, official retrenchments, and wise finance" are the means which the St. Louis Convention indicates as provision for reserves and redemptions. The best resource is a reduction of the expenses of the Government below its income; for that imposes no new charge on the people. If, however, the improvidence and waste which have conducted us to a period of falling revenues, oblige us to supplement the results of economies and retrenchments by some resort to loans, we should not hesitate. The Government ought not to speculate on its own dishonor, in order to save interest on its broken promises, which it still compels private dealers to accept at a fictitious par. The highest national honor is not only right, but would prove profitable. Of the public debt nine hundred and eighty-five millions bear interest at six per cent, in gold, and seven hundred and twelve millions at five per cent, in gold. The average interest is 5.58 per cent. A financial policy which should secure the highest credit, wisely availed of, ought gradually to obtain a reduction of one per cent, in the interest on most of the loans. A saving of one per cent, on the average would be seventeen millions a year in gold. That saving regularly invested at four and a half per cent, would, in less than thirty-eight years, extinguish the principal. The whole seventeen hundred millions of funded debt might be paid by this saving alone, without cost to the people.

The proper time for resumption is the time when wise preparations shall have ripened into a perfect ability to accomplish the object with a certainty and ease that will inspire confidence and encourage the reviving of business. The earliest time in which such a result can be brought about is the best. Evert^when the preparations shall have been matured, the exact date would have to be chosen with reference to the then existing state of trade and credit operations in our own country, the course of foreign commerce, and the condition of the exchanges with other nations. The specific measures and the actual date are matters of detail having reference to ever-changing conditions. They belong to the domain of practical administrative statesmanship.

The captain of a steamer about starting from New York to Liverpool does not assemble a council over his ocean chart and fix an angle by which to lash the rudder for the whole voyage. A human intelligence must be at the helm to discern the shifting forces of the waters and the winds. A human hand must be on the helm to feel the elements day by day, and guide to a mastery over them.

Such preparations are everything. Without them, a legislative command fixing a day, an official promise fixing a day, are shams. They are worse—they are a snare and a delusion to all who trust them. They destroy all confidence among thoughtful men whose judgment will at last sway public opinion. An attempt to act on such a command or such a promise, without preparation, would end in a new suspension. It would be a fresh calamity, prolific of confusion, distrust, and distress.

The act of Congress of the 14th of January, 1875, enacted that, on and after the 1st of January, 1879,tne Secretary of the Treasury shall redeem in coin the legal-tender notes of the United States on presentation at the office of the Assistant Treasurer in the City of New-York. It authorized the Secretary "to prepare and provide for" such resumption of specie payments by the use of any surplus revenues not otherwise appropriated; and by issuing, in his discretion, certain classes of bonds. More than one and a half of the four years have passed. Congress and the President have continued ever since to unite in acts which have legislated out of existence every possible surplus'applicable to this purpose. The coin in the Treasury claimed to belong to the Government had, on the 30th of June, fallen to less than forty-five millions of dollars, as against fifty-nine millions on the 1st of January, 1875, and the availability of a part of that sum is said to be questionable. The revenues are falling faster than appropriations and expenditures are reduced, leaving the Treasury with diminishing resources. The Secretary has done nothing under his power to issue bonds. The legislative command, the official promise fixing a day for resumption, have thus far been barren. No practical preparations toward resumption have been made. There has been no progress. There have been steps backward. There is no necromancy in the operations of government. The homely maxims of everyday life are the best standards of its conduct. A debtor who should promise to pay a loan out of surplus income, yet be seen every day spending all he could lay his hands on in riotous living would lose all character for honesty and veracity. His offer of a new promise or his profession as to the value of the old promise would alike provoke derision.

The St. Louis platform denounces the failure for eleven years to make good the promise of the legal tender notes. It denounces the omission to accumulate " any reserve for their redemption." It denounces the conduct "which, during eleven years of peace, has made no advances toward resumption, no preparation for resumption, but instead has obstructed resumption by wasting our resources and exhausting all our surplus income; and, while professing to intend a speedy return to specie payments, has annually enacted fresh hindrances thereto." And having first denounced the barrenness of the promise of a day of resumption, it next denounces that barren promise as "a hindrance" to resumption. It then demands its repeal and also demands the establishment of "a judicious system of preparation," for resumption. It cannot be doubted that the substitution of "a system of preparation" without the promise of a day for the worthless promise of a day without "a system of preparation" would be the gain of the substance of resumption in exchange for its shadow. Nor is the denunciation unmerited of that improvidence which, in the eleven years since the peace, has consumed four thousand five . hundred millions of dollars, and yet could not afford to give the people a sound and stable currency. Two and a half per cent, on the expenditures of these eleven years, or even less, would have provided all the additional coin needful to resumption.

The distress now felt by the people in all their business and industries, though it has its principal cause in the enormous waste of capital occasioned by the false policies of our Government, has been greatly aggravated by the mismanagement of the currency. Uncertainty is the prolific parent of mischiefs in all business. Never were its evils more felt than now. Men do nothing because they are unable to make any calculations on which they can safely rely. They undertake nothing because . they fear a loss in everything they would attempt. They stop and wait. The merchant dares not buy for the future consumption of his customers. The manufacturer dares not make fabrics which may not refund his outlay. He shuts his factory and discharges his workmen. Capitalists cannot lend on security they consider safe, and their funds lie almost without interest. Men of enterprise who have credit, or securities to pledge, will not borrow. Consumption has fallen below the natural limits of a reasonable economy. Prices of many things are under their range in frugal, specie-paying times before the civil war. Vast masses of currency lie in the banks unused. A year and a half ago the legal tenders were at their largest volume, and the twelve millions since retired have been replaced by fresh issues of fifteen millions of bank notes. In the meantime the banks have been surrendering about four millions a month, because they cannot find a profitable use for so many of their notes. The public mind will no longer accept shams. It has suffered enough from illusions. An insecure policy increases distrust. An unstable policy increases uncertainty. The people need to know that the Government is moving in the direction of ultimate safety and prosperity, and that it is doing so through prudent, safe, and conservative methods, which will be sure to inflict no new sacrifice on the business of the country. Then the inspiration of new hope and well-founded confidence will hasten the restoring processes of nature, and prosperity will begin to return. The St. Louis Convention concludes its expression in regard to the currency by a declaration of its convictions as to the practical results of the system of preparations it demands. It says: "We believe such a system, well devised, and above all, intrusted to competent hands for execution,

creating at no time an artificial scarcity of currency, and at no time alarming the public mind into a withdrawal of that vaster machinery of credit by which ninety-five per cent, of all business transactions are performed—a system open, public, and inspiring general confidence would, from the day of its adoption, bring healing on its wings to all our harassed industries, set in motion the wheels of commerce, manufactures, and the mechanic arts, restore employment to labor, and renew in all its natural sources the prosperity of the people." The Government of the United States, in my opinion, can advance to a resumption of specie payments on its legal tender notes by gradual and safe processes tending to relieve the present business distress. If charged by the people with the administration of the Executive office, I should deem it a duty so to exercise the powers with which it has been or may be invested by Congress as best and soonest to conduct the country to that beneficent result.

The Convention justly affirms that reform is necessary in the civil service, necessary to its purification, necessary to its economy and its efficiency, necessary in order that the ordinary employment of the public business may not be "a prize fought for at the ballot-box, a brief reward of party zeal instead of posts of honor assigned for proved competency, and held for fidelity in the public employ." The Convention wisely added that "Reform is necessary even more in the highest grades of the public service. President, Vice-President, Judges, Senators, Representatives, Cabinet officers, these and all others in authority are the people's servants. Their offices are nor a private perquisite, they are a public trust." Two evils infest the official service of the Federal Government. One is the prevalent and demoralizing notion that the public service exists not for the business and benefit of the whole people, but for the interest of the officeholders, who are in truth but the servants of the people. Under the influence of this pernicious error public employments have been multiplied; the numbers of those gathered into the ranks of office-holders have been steadily increased beyond any possible requirement of the public business, while inefficiency, peculation, fraud, and malversation of the public funds, from the high places of power to the lowest, have overspread the whole service like a leprosy. The other evil is the organization of the official class into a body of political mercenaries, governing the caucuses and dictating the nominations of their own party, and attempting to carry the elections of the people by undue influence and by immense corruption funds systematically collected from the salaries or fees of office-holders. The official class in other countries, sometimes by its own weight, and sometimes in alliance with the army, has been able to rule the unorganized masses even under universal suffrage. Here, it has already grown into a gigantic power, capable of stifling the inspirations of a sound public opinion, and of resisting an easy change of administration, until misgovernment becomes intolerable and public spirit has been stung to the pitch of a civic revolution. The first step in reform is the elevation of the standard by which the appointing power selects agents to execute official trusts. Next in importance is a conscientious fidelity in the exercise of the authority to hold to account and displace untrustworthy or incapable subordinates. The public interest in an honest, skillful performance of official trust must not be sacrificed to the usufruct of the incumbents. After these immediate steps, which will insure the exhibition of better examples, we may wisely go on to the abolition of unnecessary offices, and finally to the patient, careful organization of a better civil-service system, under the tests, wherever practicable, of proved competency and fidelity. While much may be accomplished by these methods, it might encourage delusive expectations if I withheld here the expression of my conviction that no reform of the civil service in this country will be complete and permanent until its Chief Magistrate is constitutionally disqualified for re-election, experience having repeatedly exposed the futility of self-imposed restrictions by candidates or incumbents. Through this solemnity only can he be effectually delivered from his greatest temptation to misuse the power and patronage with which the Executive is necessarily charged.

Educated in the belief that at is the first duty of a citizen of the Republic to take his fair allotment of care and frouble in public affairs, I have, for forty years, as a private citizen, fulfilled that duty. Though occupied in an unusual degree during all that period with the concerns of Government, I have never acquired the habit of official life. When, a year and a half ago, I entered upon my present trust, it was in order to consummate reforms to which I had already devoted several of the best years of my life. Knowing as I do, therefore, from fresh experience, how great the difference is between gliding through an official routine and' working out a reform of systems and policies, it is impossible for me to contemplate what needs to be done in the Federal Administration without an anxious sense of the difficulties of the undertaking. If summoned by the suffrages of my countrymen to attempt this work, I shall endeavor, with God's help, to be the efficient instrument of their will.

Samuel J. Tilden. To Gen. John A. McClernand, Chairman; Gen.

W. B. Franklin, Hon. J. G. Abbott, Hon. H.

J. Spannhorst, Hon. H. J. Redfield, Hon. F.

S. Lyon, and others, Committee, &c.

Got. Hendricks' Letter of Acceptance*

Indianapolis, July 24, 1876. Gentlemen: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication, in which you have formally notified me of my nomination by the National Democratic Convention, at St. Louis, as their candidate for the office of VicePresident of the United States. It is a nomination which I had neither expected nor desired; and yet I recognize and appreciate the high honor done me by the Convention. The choice of such a body, pronounced with such unusual unanimity, and accompanied with so generous an expression of esteem and confidence ought to outweigh all merely personal desires and preferences of my own. It is with this feeling, and I trust also from a deep sense of public duty, that I now accept

the nomination, and shall abide the judgment of my countrymen.

It would have been impossible for me to accept the nomination if I could not heartily indorse the platform of the Convention. I am gratified, therefore, to be able unequivocally to declare that I agree in the principles, approve the policies, and sympathize with the purposes enunciated in that platform.

The institutions of our country ha^ve been sorely tried by the exigencies of civil war, and, since the peace, by a selfish and corrupt management of public affairs, which has shamed us before civilized mankind. By unwise and partial legislation every industry and interest of the people have been made to suffer, and in the executive departments of the Government dishonesty, rapacity and venality have debauched the public service. Men known to be unworthy have been promoted, while others have been degraded for fidelity to official duty. Public office has been made the means of private profit, and the country has been offended to see a class of men who boast the friendship of the sworn protectors of the State amassing fortunes by defrauding the public treasury and by corrupting the servants of the people. In such a crisis of the history of the country I rejoice that the Convention at St. Louis has so nobly raised the standard of reform. Nothing can be well with us or with our affairs until the public conscience, shocked by the enormous evils and abuses which prevail, shall have demanded and compelled an unsparing reformation of our National Administration, "in its head and in its members." In such a reformation the removal of a single officer, even the President, is comparatively a trifling matter, if the system which he represents, and which has fostered him as he has fostered it, is suffered to remain. The President alone must not be made the scapegoat for the enormities of the system which infects the public service, and threatens the destruction of our institutions. In some respects I hold that the present Executive has been the victim rather than the author of that vicious system. Congressional and party leaders have been stronger than the President. No one man could have created it, and the removal of no one man can amend it. It is thoroughly corrupt, and must be swept remorselessly away by the selection of a Government composed of elements entirely new, and pledged to radical reform.

The first work of reform must evidently be the restoration of the normal operation of the Constitution of the United States, with all its amendments. The necessities of war cannot be pleaded in time of peace; the right of local self-government as guaranteed by the Constitution of the Union must be everywhere restored, and the centralized (almost personal) imperialism which has been practiced must be done away or the first principles of the Republic will be lost.

Our financial system of expedients must be reformed. Gold and silver are the real standard of values, and our national currency will not be a perfect medium of exchange until it shall be convertible at the pleasure of the holder. As I have heretofore said, no one desires a return to specie payments more earnestly than I do; but I do not believe that it will or can be reached in harmony with the interests of the people by artificial measures for the contraction of the currency, any more than I believe that wealth or permanent prosperity can be created by an inflation of the currency. The laws of finance can not be disregarded with impunity. The financial policy of the Government, if indeed, it deserves the name of policy at all, has been in disregard of those laws, and therefore has disturbed commercial and business confidence, as well as hindered a return to specie payments. One feature of that policy was the resumption clause of the act of 1875, which has embarrassed the country by the anticipation of a compulsory resumption for which no preparation has been made, and without any assurance that it would be practicable. The repeal of that clause is necessary that the natural operation of financial laws may be restored, that the business of the country may be relieved from its disturbing and depressing influence, and that a return to specie payments may be facilitated by the substitution of wiser and more prudent legislation which shall mainly rely on a judicious system of public economies and official retrenchments, and above all on the promotion of prosperity in all the industries of the people.

I do not understand the repeal of the resumption clause of the act of 1875 to be a backward step in our return to specie payments, but the recovery of a false step; and, although the repeal may, for a time, be prevented, yet the determination of the Democratic party on this subject has now been distinctly declared. There should be no hindrances put in the way of the return to specie payments. "As such a hindrance," says the platform of the St. Louis Convention, "we denounce the resumption clause of the act of 1875, and demand its repeal."

I thoroughly believe that by public economy, by official retrenchments, and by wise finance enabling us to accumulate the precious metals, resumption, at an early period, is possible without producing an "artificial scarcity of currency," or disturbing public or commercial credit; and that these reforms, together with the restoration of . pure government, will restore general confidence, encourage the useful investment of capital, furnish employment to labor, and relieve the country from the " paralysis of hard times."

With the industries of the people there have been frequent interferences. Our platform truly says that many industries have been impoverished to subsidize a few. Our commerce has been degraded to an inferior position on the high seas; manufactures have been diminished; agriculture has been embarrassed, and the distress of the industrial classes demands that these things shall be reformed.

The burdens of the people must also be lightened by a great change in our system of public expenses. The profligate expenditures which increased taxation from $5 per capita in i860, to $18 in 1870, tells its own story of our need of fiscal reform.

Our treaties with foreign powers should also be revised and amended, in so far as they leave citizens of foreign birth in any particular less secure in any country on earth than they would be if they had been born upon our own soil; and the iniquitous coolie system which, through the

agency of wealthy companies, imports Chinese bondmen, and establishes a species of slavery, and interferes with the just rewards of labor on our Pacific coast should be utterly abolished.

In the reform of our civil service I most heartily indorse that section of the platform which declares that the civil service ought not to be "subject to change at every election," and that it ought not to be made "the brief reward-of party zeal, but ought to be awarded for proved competency and held for fidelity in the public employ." I hope never again to see the cruel and remorseless proscription for political opinions which has disgraced the Administration of the last eight years. Bad as the civil service now is, as all know, it has some men of tried integrity and proved ability. Such men, and such men only, should be. retained in office; but no man should be retained, on any consideration, who has prostituted his office to the purposes of partisan intimidation or compulsion, or who has furnished money to corrupt the elections. This is done, and has been done in almost every county of the land. It is a blight upon the morals of the country, and ought to be reformed.

Of sectional contentions, and in respect to our common schools, I have' only this to say: That in my judgment, the man or party that would involve our schools in political or sectarian controversy is an enemy to the schools. The common schools are safer under the protecting care of all the people than under the control of any party or sect. They must be neither sectarian nor partisan, and there must be neither division nor misappropriation of the funds for their support. Likewise I regard the man who would arouse or foster sectional animosities and antagonisms among his countrymen as a dangerous enemy to his country. All the people must be made to feel and know that once more there is established a purpose and policy under which all citizens of every condition, race, and color, will be secure in the enjoyment of whatever rights the Constitution and laws declare or recognize; and that in controversies that may arise the Government is not a partisan, but within its constitutional authority the just and powerful guardian of the rights and safety of all. The strife between the sections and between races will cease as soon as the power for evil is taken away from a party that makes political gain out of scenes of violence and bloodshed, and the constitutional authority is placed in the hands of men whose political welfare requires that peace and good order shall be preserved everywhere.

It will be seen, gentlemen, that I am in entire accord with the platform of the Convention by which I have been nominated as a candidate for the office of Vice-President of the United States. Permit me, in conclusion, to express my satisfaction at being associated with a candidate for the Presidency who is first among his equals as a representative of the spirit and of the achievements of reform. In his official career as the Executive of the great State of New York, he has, in a comparatively short period, reformed the public service and reduced the public burdens, so as to have earned at once the gratitude of his State and the admiration of the country. The people know him to be thoroughly in earnest; he has shown himself to be possessed of powers and qualities which fit him, in an eminent degree, for the great work of reformation which this country now needs; and if he shall be chosen by the people to the high office of President of the United States, I believe that the day of his inauguration will be the beginning of a new era of

peace, purity, and prosperity in all departments of our Government. I am, gentlemen, your obedient servant,

Thomas A. Hendricks, To Hon. John A. McClernand, Chairman, and others of the Committee of the National Democratic Convention.

"Greenback" National Platform,

The Independent ("Greenback") National Convention met at Indianapolis, Indiana, on the 18th day of May, and nominated Mr. Peter Cooper, of New York city, for President, and Hon. Newton Booth, of California, for VicePresident.

The Platform adopted is as follows:

The Independent party is called into existence by the necessities of the people, whose industries are prostrated, whose labor is deprived of its just reward by a ruinous policy which the Republican and Democratic parties refuse to change, and in view of the failure of these parties to furnish relief to the depressed industries of the country, thereby disappointing the just hopes and expectations of the suffering people, we declare our principles and invite all independent and patriotic men to join our ranks in this movement for financial reform and industrial emancipation:

First. We demand the immediate and unconditional repeal of the specie resumption act of January 14, 1875, and the rescue of our industries from ruin and disaster resulting from its enforcement; and we call upon all patriotic men to organize in every Congressional District of the country with a view of electing representatives to Congress who will carry out the wishes of the people in this regard and stop the present suicidal and destructive policy of contraction.

Second. We believe that a United States note issued directly by the Government and convertible on demand into United States obligations, bearing a rate of interest not exceeding one cent a day on each one hundred dollars, and exchangeable for United States notes at par, will afford the best circulating medium ever devised. Such United States notes should be full legal-tenders for all purposes except for the payment of such obligations as are by existing contracts especially made payable in coin, and we hold that it is the duty of the Government to provide such circulating medium, and insist, in the language of Thomas Jefferson, that "bank paper must be suppressed and the circulation restored to the nation, to whom it belongs." Third. It is the paramount duty of the Government, in all its legislation to keep in view the full development of all legitimate business, agricultural, mining, manufacturing and commercial. Fourth. We most earnestly protest against any further issue of gold bonds for sale in foreign markets, by which we would be made for a long

period "hewers of wood and drawers of water" to foreigners, especially as the American people would gladly and promptly take at par all bonds the Government may need to sell, provided they are made payable at the option of the holder and bearing interest at 3 65 per cent, per annum, or even a lower rate.

Fifth. We further protest against the sale of Government bonds for the purpose of purchasing silver to be used as a substitute for our more convenient and less fluctuating fractional currency, which, although well calculated to enrich owners of silver mines, yet in operation it will still further oppress in taxation an already over-burdened people.

A subsequent resolution against railroad subsidies was adopted.

Peter Cooper's Acceptance.

The Hon. Moses W. Field, Chairman, and the Hon. Thomas J. Durant, Secretaryp, National Executive Committee', Independent party. Gentlemen: Your formal official notification of the unanimous nomination tendered by the National Convention of the Independent party at Indianapolis on the 17th inst., to me for the high office of President of the United States, and to the Hon. Newton Booth, of California, for VicePresident, is before me, together with an authenticated copy of the admirable platform which the Convention adopted. While I most heartily thank the Convention through you for the great honor they have thus conferred upon me, kindly permit me to say that there is a bare possibility— if wise counsels prevail—that the sorely needed relief from the blighting effects of past unwise legislation relative to finance which the people so earnestly seek, may yet be had through either the Republican or Democratic party, both of them meeting in National Convention at an early date. It is unnecessary for me to assure you that while I have no aspiration for the position of Chief Magistrate of this great Republic, I will most cheerfully do what I can to forward the best interests of my country. I therefore accept your nomination conditionally, expressing the earnest hope that the Independent party may yet attain its exalted aims, while permitting me to step aside and remain in that quiet which is most congenial to my nature and time of life. Most respectfully, your obedient servant,

Peter Cooper.