Mr. CONKLING. Mr. Speaker, before making the motion for which a majority have already virtually pronounced I ask the attention of the House fora few moments, feeling the more at liberty to do so because, although a member of the committee by which the pending measure was reported, I have thus for had little part in the de ate. I WlSltto relieve not myself, because I have steadily voted for the bill, but those with whom I have differed in these votes, from the imputation, if imputation it be, from the construction at. least which may be put upon their opposition to a measuredookm to a resumption of specie payments. It has been intimated in the debate, and already an effort is visible in certain quarters, to spread abroad the impression that all those who have withheld their votes from the bill are opposed to a return to specie payments, and that the lesson of the hour is that a majority of the Union party in this House is wedded to spercurrency as a permanent financial policy for the country. No impression could be more false, few more pernicious. The divided front we have seen arises from differences in detail as to the wisest measure to adopt in order to bring about what nearly all discreet and patriotic men desire. The country is in an unhealth condition. Values are afloat, prices are wild, abor is bur dened, finances are disturbed and disordered. War, taxation, papermoney, inflation, these are the causes. Their presence is our misfortune; our necessity, perhaps. The issue of apermoney was an expedient; a passing, em orary expedient in an hour of urgent and sudden need. The authors of the expedient believed it a necessity; they admitted it to be a necessity, and ey advocated it only upon the ground that it ould be but a passing, ephemeral device. O man dared to argue for it in any other way. twould never have been accepted when itwas or as it was but for this qualification and apol ogy. Congress knew, the nation knew then as well as everybody knows now, that aperis not a true standard of value, nor, indec, any standard at all. Gold and silver are the measures and standards of value; the honest standards, the worlds standards, the real standards. Why? Because they are money. Is that the only reason? Not. at all and here I differ with the Gentfrom Pennsylvania [Mr. BRO0MALL.] Coin is the true standard of value in the commercial world because it represents the cost of production. That is the diflerence between a metallic and a papercurrency. Its value is not alone in its being stamped or called “ money” “ The rank is but the guineasstamp." A silver dollar or a gold eagle represents the cost of producing it, with a trifling difference, perhaps, arisin from the expense of coinage, and the alloy which hardens it against attrition and keeps it out of the crucibles of other nations. What does paperreresent? If redeemable in coin, it represents temetallic value behind it, if irredeemable it represents nothing in it self, it. simpl is evidence of a promise to pay. The “legstender policy, ” asit is called, the policy of licensing by law a suspension of specie payments, was not inaugurated by the American Congress in ignorance of all this. The vote on Friday, by which the pending bill was for the moment lost, was not given in ig norance or forgetfulness of this, nor by those who deny the maxims of sound political econ omy far from it. The SecyTreasury, at Fort Wayne, and in his able annual report, and the POTUS in the clear and cogent passage of his annual message in which he set.orth the financial topic, did but echo the Universal, well considered sentiment of the nation when the said that the present condition is unnaturaland that we are tfieturn at the earliest practicable moment to the old fashioned, safe, and honest basis the hard money standard. This is the sentiment, as far as I can gather it universally among Union members here. The question, when we can resume, exactly how soon, and precisely how resumption is to be broughtabout and forced about, isa oint upon which the warmest advocates of car y resumtion doubt and differ to some extent. Butt e main idea we all hold to. The Gentfrom Illinois, [Mr. wssrwonrn] who even now at tracts attention by the uneasy zeal with which he supports the bill, need not, I think, instruct his colileagues on this subject. Certainly I do not need it. I was here when the “legal tender” policy was launched. I remember the contest well. The financial question was then, even more than now, the overmastering public question. It was the only rock on which we could split, and we all examined ourselves to see that we made no blunder which consideration could avoid. I gave my vote and my voice against taking the 1st ste toward driving coin from circulation. I believed then, I believe now, that the hour had not yet come when it was impossible longer to postpone suspension. I believed we might wait yet awhi e; that we might try other and lesser remedies 1st, an thus in the end mitigate the evil after it. should come. Therefore I resisted the 1st. motion to suspend specie payments, and I say to the gentleman that those who stood then for the old and approved ways will be able to stand now, and to go as far and as fast as sound discretion will permitrin the path which leads to frugalit an solvency.