Boston Monday Lectures; Heredity Volume 5 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ...slopes, the effect would be much the same as if America were to pass a law that no currents should flow down its slopes towards London and Berlin in the commercial atmosphere. Applause. Tliis matter is out of the power of Congress; but one thing is not out of the power of our national legislators. They can disgrace us. They can repudiate their promises, not as a whole, but ten per cent, or eight per cent, of them. They can refuse to pay in gold the principal and interest-of government bonds. They have done so already. Lord Beacons-field said once of his opponents that their chief business was blundering and plundering. What will be the effect, if Congressional repudiation succeeds? Let the financial promises of the nation be dishonored, let ninety cents be made legal tender in place of a dollar in gold, and we shall find American bonds returned from Europe. Capitalists there would certainly refuse to take any more very suddenly. We know what the reputation of American banking is, on the whole. There are illustrious exceptions. But the saddest hour I had abroad was when I sat down on the steps of the Bank of England, after having twice lost money by American banking-houses, and wrote to my friends to send me no more funds except through the Baring Brothers, or some English firm. Undoubtedly we have sound houses; but let this silver bill pass, let foreign creditors be cheated by it, or put into such a position that they assuredly would think themselves cheated, and the effect on American credit will be of a painful kind, and perhaps prolonged. There is no sense in the boards of trade on the Atlantic coast, if they do not know where their interest lies in the raatters of importation and exportation. But the Atlantic cities, which have most at stake, ..