Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[957] issue of bonds at a lower rate of interest without the interchangeable feature. Therefore whoever invested in the interchangeable bonds would be willing to loan them wherever he could get perfect security and a slightly advanced interest, because he would always reinvest his money in the same character of bond he loaned, at the treasury at any time at par. The party borrowing a bond could deliver it to his creditor, and if the creditor wanted to dispose of it he could also deliver it as money, the money for it being in the United States Treasury to be had for the asking. So that the very bond would become an extension of the currency, being used in business interchangeably with currency.

This proposition, which was intended for relief both of the United States from high rates of interest, and of the people from stringencies of the money market, met the utmost opposition of the treasury and the bankers, and a stream of derision was poured upon the plan as from the outlet of a fire engine. But it neither annoyed nor disturbed me, and I have lived to see the same proposition recommended by the treasury some years afterwards and favored in the Senate. But it did not suit the bankers.

I brought before the Treasury Department and endeavored to have adopted another system of financial action intended to utilize the national debt and also the financial machinery of the government, in lowering the rate of interest and establishing a system by which certain classes of people might invest their money in perfect safety for their support and comfort, and in which the investment would inure to the payment of the public debt. This was an adaptation of the system of “terminal annuities” resorted to in England when the government was under pressure to borrow money. But from their laws regarding the accumulation of property, it is not resorted to except in cases of necessity.

In this country our laws provide, somewhat, but do not go far enough, for the distribution of great estates among the people, upon the termination of the lives of those who own them. We abolished the laws of primogeniture by which such estates could be held together. Great Britain still retains that system, and great estates can thereby be held together from generation to generation. We have something which is worse in our system — corporations and trusteeships which keep moneys together in separate estates for several generations, and