45th Congress, 2nd Session
Birchard Hayes, President by vote-fraud
Almon Wheeler, vice-president
John Sherman, Secretary of the Treasury

Payment of Government Bonds.

The Vice-President.  The unfinished business is the resolution offered by the Senator from Ohio, [Mr. Matthews,] on the 6th of December, relative to the payment of the public debt in silver dollars.

The resolution was read, as follows:

Whereas by the act entitled "An act to strengthen the public credit," approved March 18, 1869, it was provided and declared that the faith of the United States was thereby solemnly pledged to the payment in coin or its equivalent of all the interest-bearing obligations of the United States, except in cases where the law authorizing the issue of such obligations had expressly provided that the same might be paid in lawful money or other currency than gold and silver;  and

Whereas all the bonds of the United States authorized to be issued by the act entitled "An act to authorize the refunding of the national debt," approved July 14, 1870, by the terms of said act, were declared to be redeemable in coin of the then present standard value, bearing interest payable semi-annually in such coin;

Whereas all bonds of the United States authorized to be issued under the act entitled "An act to provide for the resumption of specie payments," approved January 14, 1875, are required to be of the description of bonds of the United States described in the said act of Congress approved July 14, 1870, entitled "An act to authorize the refunding of the national debt;"  and

Whereas at the date of the passage of said act of Congress last aforesaid, to wit, the 14th day of July, 1870, the coin of the United States of standard value of that date included silver dollars of the weight of 412½ grains each, as declared by the act approved January 18, 1837, entitled "An act supplementary to the act entitled 'An act establishing a mint and regulating the coins of the United States,’" to be a legal tender of payment according to their nominal value for any sums whatever:  Therefore,

Be it resolved by the Senate, (the House of Representatives concurring therein,) That all the bonds of the United States issued or authorized to be issued under the said acts of Congress hereinbefore recited, and payable, principal and interest, at the option of the Government of the United States, in silver dollars, of the coinage of the United States, containing 412½ grains each, of standard silver;  and that to restore to its coinage such silver coins as a legal tender in payment of said bonds, principal and interest, is not in violation of the public faith, nor in derogation of the rights of the public creditor.

Mr. Beck [James Burnie Beck (February 13, 1822 - May 3, 1890), Lexington Kentucky, D; studied law, admitted to the bar].  Mr. President, as I understand the resolution and the preamble just read in the hearing of the Senate, it means that it is not only the right but, those facts being true, it is the duty of the Senate to vote for some bill restoring the standard silver dollar of 412½ grains to the position it occupied before its coinage was denied by the act of February 12, 1873, and before its legal-tender quality was destroyed by the Revised Statutes in 1874.  Believing as I do that all the recitals and conclusions in the resolution just read are true, and believing that there are many other equally cogent reasons why some bill having that effect should be passed by the Senate, I shall give my reasons for supporting such a bill, believing that I can do so as well now under this resolution as I could if the bill were before the Senate.

I want to say in the beginning that I do not favor the entire bill as it came from the House of Representatives, though I will vote for it if it cannot be amended.  In the present condition of the country, I regard that provision in the House bill, which was stricken out by the Senate Committee on Finance, in these words, "and any owner of silver bullion may deposit the same at any United States coinage mint or assay-office, to be coined into such dollars, for his benefit, upon the same terms and conditions as gold bullion is deposited for coinage under existing laws," as properly stricken out.  I do not like the amendment offered by the Senate Committee on Finance;  but my idea is that in the present condition of the value of the silver bullion of the world it is not good policy for us to allow any individual to bring silver bullion that the people of the United States can buy in the market for $920 and make it at our mints, at the demand of any man, into silver coin of the value of $1,000, for his private use and benefit.  That benefit ought to inure to the people of the United States, by whose skill, industry, and authority the change is made.  We can buy silver bullion as cheaply as private individuals can, either in Germany, in Nevada, or anywhere else where it is for sale, and I can see no reason why private individuals should have the benefit of the skill, the labor, and the authority of the tax-payer and receive the benefit, when it might as well go for public as for private use.

To illustrate:  we know that in the present condition of the world there are large quantities of silver for sale.  Germany has demonetized silver, and there are millions, perhaps $100,000,000, some say more than that, of silver now for sale in that country at a reduced price.  Why should the German Emperor, why should Prince Bismarck, (because anybody has a right, it is not confined to America, but anybody has the right under the House bill to bring his bullion to the mints of the United States and demand silver dollars for it,) why should the German Emperor or his prime minister have the right to bring to us bullion, supposing we can coin $50,000,000 a year, that is worth in the markets of the world $46,000,000, it being assumed that there is a discount of 8 per cent. on it now ?  Why should he bring bullion that we can buy for $46,000,000 and demand from us $50,000,000 of our silver coin for it ?  If that can be done, the four millions will inure to the benefit of the foreign power or the individual who sees fit to bring it, instead of the tax-payer of the country, and we have to make the conversion for his benefit and not for our own.

More than that, as fifty million is perhaps the limit of the coinage power of the mints of the United States to-day per annum, if the Director of the Mint should receive from any foreign power (to keep up the illustration, from the German premier) enough to coin $50,000,000, thus exhausting the power of our mints, a still better bargain could be made by the German statesmen, because they could say to the Bremen line of steamers or any of the other German lines that the duties on all goods which were brought over should be paid for in the silver dollar, thus made legal tender when nobody had silver but themselves, and get profits both ways, four millions one way and four millions the other.  I claim that the power of this people and the authority of this people ought to be exercised for the benefit of the taxpayers of this country, and whatever seigniorage there is ought to be given to them.

It is said that the coinage of gold is free now, that any private individual has a right to deposit it at our mints and receive his coin.  That is true.  Why ?  Because the gold bullion is worth as much before it is coined as it is after it is coined.  It requires a thousand coined dollars to buy a thousand dollars' worth of gold bullion, and if we refuse to do it, England stands ready to coin that thousand dollars of gold bullion into her coin and get the benefit of that coinage, and the addition to her circulation instead of ours.  Therefore in that position of things we have to do as other countries do.  The benefit is mutual.  To give to the man who brings his gold bullion our coin is a convenience to him and a benefit to us.  It is not so now with silver.  I will speak after a while of the reasons why it is not so;  but it is not so, and as long as it is not so I contend we should retain the benefit of the conversion to relieve the tax-payers of the country to that extent.

Whenever the two metals come together, as they will after you give each an equal chance, then I shall be in favor of making coinage as free as possible as soon as they come together or within any small fraction of a per cent.  But I would amend the bill in this, and in that I differ with the Committee on Finance:  I would not allow a hostile Secretary or a hostile Director of the Mint --and we have got both now, and I doubt whether we shall ever have fair coinage as long as we have the present Director of the Mint-- but as long as we have a hostile Secretary and a hostile Director, I would make the order absolutely mandatory on them that they should coin as much for the people as they could, by possibility, coin for individuals.  I would put no limit of maximum beyond the power of the mints to coin, but they should turn out all that could be turned out for the people as much as they could for individuals who tender it under the bill offered by the House.  So I would remove all question as to the benefit of free coinage and all questions among individuals as to whose bullion should be first converted into coin;  I would make jobs of that sort impossible.  There is very high authority for the view that the benefit should be given to the people.  Mr. Hamilton, in his report in 1791, page 146 of the volume I read from, answered the argument that was made that every fabric was free.  His language is this:

Every fabric, it is remarked, is worth intrinsically the price of the raw material and the expense of fabrication --a truth not less applicable to a piece of coin than to a yard of cloth.

This position, well founded in itself, is here misapplied.  It supposes that the coins now in circulation are to be considered as bullion, or, in other words, as a raw material;  but the fact is, that the adoption of them as money has caused them to become the fabric;  it has invested them with the character and office of coins, and has given them a sanction and efficiency equivalent to that of the stamp of the sovereign.  The prices of all our commodities at home and abroad, and of all foreign commodities in our markets, have found their level in conformity to this principle.

And he contended that the Government should have the benefit of the increase of value caused by the conversion into coin.  Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, then chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, in 1853, in one of the best considered reports on this question that I have ever read, took the same ground, and the law of 1853 gave to the Government the right for which I contend and denied individuals the right to have the new silver coin struck on their own account.  The present Director of the Mint, Dr. Linderman, in speaking of this matter in his recently published book, speaking of the law reported and passed from Mr. Hunter's committee, says:

This was due, no doubt, to the provision made in the same act, whereby all the silver coins, except the dollar piece, were thereafter to be coined on account of the Public Treasury as well as to the belief entertained at the time that there would not be any considerable quantity of silver dollars coined, their bullion value being above their nominal or legal-tender value.

So much on that subject.  As I stated, however, I believe that there are many other good reasons why the silver dollar should be restored to the coinage of the country.  I believe that the act of 1873, striking it from the coinage, and the Revised Statutes, declaring that it should not be a legal tender, were the one vicious and the other unconstitutional.  The sole effect of them both was to take away from the people of this country one half of the means that they had for paying their debts;  not alone from the Government of the United States, and the argument seems to have been confined heretofore to that aspect of it, but from the States, from the municipalities, from the railroad and other great corporations, and from private individuals the right to use what had been made a legal tender for all debts, public and private, and said to them by congressional legislation that they should no longer have the right to use coin which the United States had coined and the value of which it had regulated, and which was the coin they had the right to make payment in at the time the contract was made.  Those debts, independent altogether of the debt of the United States, exceeded$5,000,000,000;  many persons say $7,000,000,000.  Certainly the debts of the United States and of the States, municipalities, corporations, and individuals exceeded $7,000,000,000;  and these acts of Congress, the one striking the silver dollar from the coinage, the other denying its legal-tender quality, throw the burden, at a time when we had neither gold nor silver in circulation, on gold alone under laws passed by Congress requiring us to pay every debt, public and private, on and after the 1st day of next January, in gold.  Thus your legislation doubled the value of gold, reduced the price of all species of property from one-third to one-half, so that people who have to meet their contracts hereafter with gold alone to pay them in, see their property put under the hammer by the sheriff or the bankrupt court, and bringing less than one-third or even half of what it was worth and could have sold for when the contract was made and could be sold for to-day but for the fact that Congress intervened and deprived them of the right to use the coin which itself had furnished and in which they would have had a right to pay but for improper congressional interference.  In other words, you have not put down silver 8 per cent. but you have put gold up 8 per cent.  No human being can get a dollar of gold coin from the Government of the United States except its bondholders.  They have a right to sell it at any price they can;  and all the private debts of the country, all the debts of the States, all the debts of corporations, and all the debts of municipalities and individuals are to be paid in that coin on the 1st day of next January under laws now in existence, or the property is to be taken at whatever price the man who has the gold, which the bondholder alone gets, sees fit to pay for it.

I say, therefore, the first act was unwise and unjust;  the second unconstitutional.  Why do I say it ?  Silver was the coin of this country before the Constitution itself was adopted.  It was the coin of all the States during the confederation.  Each State reserved the right to coin it under the articles of confederation;  each State reserved the right to regulate the value of foreign coin, though they gave to the congress of the Confederation the right to regulate the value of their own coin, if nine States agreed to it.  There was a want of uniformity in the coinage of the States, a want of uniformity in the valuation of foreign coins by the States.  So when they came to form a more perfect union and establish the Constitution, the States voluntarily relinquished their right to coin money;  they gave to the United States as the common agent of all, who undertook the trust, the right to coin money and regulate the value thereof and of foreign coins, as well as to regulate the standard of weights and measures.  They regarded them all as being in the same category.  Money was the pound-weight, the yard-stick, the bushel-measure of commerce, just as other weights and measures which would regulate and control the contracts of individuals in their private transactions;  and, to have uniformity of action and to see that each State should have equal rights and none should impose on the others, they surrendered to the Federal Government, the common agent of all, the exclusive right to coin that money and regulate the value thereof.  When that was done, the power of the Federal Government ceased.  The States reserved to themselves the right to make gold and silver coin a legal tender for all debts.  Both were the money of the Constitution.  The States gave to the Federal Government no other powers except those expressly granted and such as were necessary to carry out the purpose of the grants.  They did not give it a right to take away the legal-tender quality after they had once issued coin and regulated its value;  and to "make assurance doubly sure" they inserted in the Constitution the provision that all powers not granted to the Federal Government, nor withheld from the States, should be reserved to the States and the people.

That coin, when it was given to the States, became the coin of the people.  No State can violate the obligation of a contract;  and the United States has no more right to violate the obligation of a contract, or cause others to do it, than the States have.  Contracts were to be sacred.  How could the contracts made by the States, how could contracts made by the people of the States, by the municipalities and corporations of the States, be executed when they could make nothing but gold or silver the legal coin in the payment of their debts, if the United States, the common agent of all classes, should say, "We will not furnish you silver coin" ?  And if you would say, "We will not furnish you gold," you would put it out of their power to comply with the obligation of their contracts, because if you can close your mint to one you can to the other.  When Congress said to the States, "we have furnished you coin, the standard silver dollar, 412½ grains, containing 371¼ grains of pure silver;  that is the value of it;  we have so regulated it;  we have furnished you with the means;  you have it,"  I deny the constitutional power of Congress to intervene after it has done that and say, "These dollars, thus furnished, thus regulated, thus put into the hands of States and people, shall not be a legal-tender for more than $5, although they were, at the time they were issued and at the time the States and people made their contracts, a legal tender for any amount whatever."

I deny all power over legal tender as to those issues.  While there may be some dispute as to the power of the Federal Government relating to the debts that it has contracted, the Federal Government has no power over the debts contracted by the States or by private individuals beyond the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof, to enable them to carry out the contracts they have made.  For these reasons, too, as well as the good and sufficient reasons set forth in the preamble of the resolution, I would restore the silver dollar as it stood at the time it was stricken from the mint and at the time it was unconstitutionally and illegally, in my opinion, made only a legal tender for $5 by the Revised Statutes of the country.

A great deal has been said, and we have been furnished with literature by gentlemen all over the country of great ability, showing that the silver dollar never was the dollar of the country, that it was always subsidiary coin.  I want to refer, so that I shall do no injustice, to some of the arguments on this floor upon this subject.  The very able and distinguished Senator from New York, [Mr. Kernan,] in a speech made by him, took the ground that---

The party who advanced money and took our bonds, whether he was a citizen of this country or a foreigner, in view of these facts, in view of the fact that this silver dollar was not and never had been practically a coin in use in this country to any considerable amount, did not understand that the coin mentioned in these statutes was this silver dollar.  He did not believe and had no good reason to believe that the bonds were to be paid in this silver coin.

Again:

I insist that, in view of these facts, it can hardly be claimed that the parties to the contract, the Government on the one side and the loaner of money to it on its bonds on the other, understood even before the act of February 12, 1873, that the term "coin" in the acts of 1869 and 1870 imported that the bonds were to be paid in the silver dollar which had really never been in practical use as currency in the country and of which only a few millions had ever been coined.

Again:

I first submit that in view of the fact that the Government had been going on from 1793 coining gold coin by the thousand million and its silver dollar only to the extent of $8,045,000 whether parties who had taken from the Government or bought the bonds in the market after the law of 1869, by which the Government pledged its faith to pay them in coin, had not a right to believe that the Government would pay them in the current legal-tender gold coin which alone had been issued by the Government and used in the country for the payment of large sums.

I deny that such was the state of fact in regard to the silver coinage of this country;  certainly not up to 1834;  indeed until after 1850.  The silver dollar was the unit of value from the beginning.  It was made so by the resolution of 1786, before the Constitution was adopted.  Up to 1834, when the value of the gold dollar was reduced from the ratio of 15 to 1 to that of 16 to 1 of silver, there had been only about $10,000,000 of gold of all denominations coined in the United States.  There were over $5,000,000 more silver half dollars of full legal-tender value, as shown by Dr. Linderman's book, coined in the years 1830, 1831, 1832, 1833, and 1834 than all the gold that ever had been coined in the United States from 1793 up to 1834.  Up to 1849, until the discovery of gold in California, silver was the coin of this country.  The Spanish and Mexican dollars were used and made by law a legal tender.  There never was a dollar of gold coined as dollars --if we stand on the word-- never was a one-dollar gold-piece coined in the United States till 1849, and nearly all our gold coinage since that time has been in double eagles.  There never was a double eagle coined until 1850, when the gold flowed in from California so rapidly that we had to reduce the fractional currency of silver in 1853 to keep it from going out of the country;  but nobody thought of demonetizing silver on that account, or of interfering with gold because of its abundance.  Mr. Hunter's report makes that very plain, and I will read from it, as it is better than anything I can say upon the subject:

It seems --said the Finance Committee of the Senate through Mr. Hunter in 1853-- that for fifty years from 1750 to 1800, the quantity of silver raised was to that of gold as 40 to 1;  and yet, during that period, the value of gold was not more than fifty times as great as that of silver.  As a further proof of the greater quantity of coined silver, we find that the value of the silver, as compared with gold coin, was, in France, from 1803 to 1840, nearly as 3 to 4;  and in the United States, from 1793 to 1841, was nearly as 2 to 1.

By what authority, then, can any person imagine that the silver coin never had been to any extent the currency of the country, when, from 1793 to 1841 the value of the silver coin in the United States was nearly 2 to 1 ?

And in Great Britain, where gold was the exclusive legal standard, silver being used only for the smaller transactions of trade, the proportion of silver was more than 1 to 6.  So that there can be little doubt of the large excess in value of the silver coin, as compared with gold. (See table A.)

Which table exhibits the facts clearly, but I will not stop to read or exhibit it.

Indeed, it appears from a carefully compiled table, appended to Mr. Ingham's report (Document No. 117, page 109) that from 1492 to 1825 there were coined from the American mines $4,310,000,000 in silver, and only $1,890,000,000 in gold.

The Senate will observe that there was more than double, nearly three times as much more silver coinage as there was gold coinage, according to Mr. Ingham's report up to 1825 !

But, in tracing the effect of this change of the relative value upon particular countries, we must not forget its operation upon the rest of the world.  In thus excluding one of these metals from one country, if its property and trade were large, and in thus forcing more than its natural proportion into manufactures, we should diminish the volume of specie currency of the world below the natural supply.  How this would affect mankind will be hereafter examined.  But the mischief would be great indeed if all the world were to adopt but one of the precious metals as the standard of value.  To adopt gold alone would diminish the specie currency more than one-half;  and the reduction the other way, should silver be taken as the only standard, would be large enough to prove highly disastrous to the human race.  Indeed, a reference to the history of the precious metals and the general course of human production, can scarcely fail to convince us that there has been a constant tendency to appreciate their value, as compared with the residue of the property of the world, and that very extraordinary increase of the supply of the precious metals, of which we have any account, has exercised a highly beneficial effect upon human affairs.  When contracts are made by a standard which is gradually contracting, the advantages are on the side of capital, as against labor, and productive energy is cramped by receiving less than a fair share of the profit of its enterprises.

If Mr. Hunter had been criticising the folly of the congressional action of 1873 or arguing for its repeal, he could not have spoken more aptly nor more wisely.  But I will not stop to comment now.  He said further:

Before the invention of substitutes for payments in coin, and before the increased supply of specie from the discovery of America, human history is full of the strifes between debtor and creditor, and human legislation is rife with experiments to limit the encroaching and engrossing power of capital.

I read so much of this report now (I will refer to it again hereafter in another point of view) to show that all statements claiming that silver was not the currency of this country are delusive, no matter how high the authority making them.  I have here a table in which Mr. Hunter shows that up to 1850 we had coined of silver coin, independent altogether of the Mexican and Spanish dollars, which formed a large portion of our currency, about $78,000,000, and that up to 1849 of all sorts of gold coin we had only coined about $86,000,000.  Had this country made no progress during all those years ?

Why, Senators, we had acquired Louisiana and Florida, we had carried on a war with Great Britain from 1812 to 1815, when we had hardly any gold coin, on the credit of the silver dollar.  We had fought the Mexican war when silver was yet the standard of value and in excess of gold in our coinage;  we had acquired California and all those great countries that afterward produced the gold about which we are boasting so much and seeking to make omnipotent, in the hands of a few, even if the country is bankrupted in doing so.

After we had large quantities of gold, as you will see by studying the history of this question, we had to reduce the value of our small coins in silver, not for the purpose of driving them from the country but for the purpose of retaining them here, because the influx of gold had made them more valuable than they were before.

After the last great war began, silver and gold were both repudiated by Congress.  Gold did not help us any more than silver.  Then Congress passed an unconstitutional act making its own evidences of its indebtedness a legal tender for all debts, public and private, except interest on bonds and customs dues.  No man, whether lawyer or not, will doubt the unconstitutionality of that act who will read the great speech of Hon. Jacob Collamer, of Vermont, in the Senate, against it.  If Senators doubt, let them turn to the Globe of the 12th of February, 1862.  Nobody ever answered it, nobody could.  Everybody knew then and knows now that the act was illegal and unconstitutional.  True, we have it upon us, and we have to make the best use of the paper issued under it that we can.  I am not one of those who abuse the paper currency of the country because it was put upon us illegally.  I want to use it for every purpose and require the Government to take it for every purpose, and to make it as good and as valuable as we can by giving it every use possible.  I do not refuse to do what is best for the country because things are put upon me in ways that I do not like.  I have seen this administration inaugurated here by the decision of a commission that was worse, infinitely worse, than even the passage of the legal-tender act;  but do I refuse to obey the laws ?  Can I properly refuse to aid the administration thus inaugurated, in carrying out all legitimate purposes of the Government, because in my opinion it was inaugurated by wrongful and unconstitutional means ?  No; I look at things practically.

I know that the bondholders, the monopolists of this country, are seeking to destroy all the industries of this people, in their greed to enhance the value of their gold.  I know that the act of 1873 did more than all else to accomplish that result, and the demonetization act of the Revised Statutes was an illegal and unconstitutional consummation of the fraud.  I want to restore that money to where it was before, and thus aid in preventing the consummation of their designs.  In the National Republican of this morning there is an interview with a very intelligent member of the Senate, the Senator from Nevada, [Mr. Jones,] in which among very many other valuable truths he says:

Silver is not produced in sufficient quantity, and nowhere exists in sufficient quantity, beyond current consumption in the arts and the supply needed for Asia, to be thrown on our markets in sums large enough to threaten injury to our finance, industry, or commerce.  During the year 1877, India, Japan, and China received from San Francisco, Southampton, Marseilles, and Venice, in the course of trade, $105,000,000.  This is $25,000,000 more than the production of the entire world during the same year.

Yet gentlemen are holding up their hands in horror and saying that, with mints which have not capacity to coin more than $50,000,000 a year, when those three countries are taking $25,000,000 this very last year, even in the face of demonetization everywhere, we are going to flood the country with a depreciated silver currency, cheat the bondholder, destroy the national credit, and ruin the national faith !  I believe in maintaining the national faith.  I believe in all that has been said by gentlemen, on this and on the other side, that a man ought to look to the faith of the country as he ought to look to his own honor;  but I say that he is in honor bound to see that the people he represents are not deprived of their just, legal, and constitutional rights in order to put money into the pockets of any set of men.

If there is any man who has no right to complain of the treatment that he has received from this country it is the public creditor.  I need not run over the history of what has been done for him.  When he bought his bonds he paid for them in legal-tender notes of the country and he received bonds bearing 6 per cent. interest in gold for the depreciated notes he paid.  He was made in many instances a national banker, and, to the extent of $300,000,000, the currency of the country which was used as money, in the shape of bank-notes, was put into his hands, and he was charged, over ordinary banks, only 1 per cent. for the right to lend the evidences of his own indebtedness to the people at any per cent. he could get within the law, which he knew so well how to stretch to suit himself.

In 1869 there was a plain violation of the contract made by Congress for the bondholder's benefit, so plain and palpable that even men like Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania, avowed that if that great wrong was to be done he would stand with the democratic party in opposing it.  Men such as Mr. Shellabarger, of Ohio, and others in their speeches denounced even the payment of the interest in gold.  The Senator from West Virginia [Mr. Hereford] read a letter from the present Secretary of the Treasury, which shows what his views on that subject were in 1868.  I will read it again.  It is as follows:

Dear Sir:  I was pleased to receive your letter.  My personal interests are the same as yours, but, like you, I do not intend to be influenced by them.  My construction of the law is the result of careful examination, and I feel quite sure an impartial court would confirm it, if the case could be tried before a court.  I send you my views as fully stated in a speech.  Your idea is that we propose to repudiate or violate a promise when we offer to redeem the "principal" in legal-tenders.

I think the bondholder violates his promise when he refuses to take the same kind of money he paid for the bonds.  If the case is to be tested by the law, I am right;  if it is to be tested by Jay Cooke's advertisements, I am wrong.  I hate repudiation or anything like it, but we ought not to be deterred from doing what is right by fear of undeserved epithets.  If under the law as it stands the holders of the five-twenties can only be paid in gold, then we are repudiators if we propose to pay otherwise.  If the bondholder can legally demand only the kind of money he paid, then he is a repudiator and extortioner to demand money more valuable than he gave.

Truly yours,
John Sherman.

I am not attacking that law now --my opinions in regard to it are well known-- but I am showing that the bondholders are the very last men or body of men on Earth who have any right to complain of any neglect of their interest or of any violation of public faith to their prejudice.  The provisions of the act of 1870 and all subsequent acts were enacted or inserted in the face of the bonds issued under them for the protection and at the request of the bondholders, to prevent any act of Congress from being passed diminishing the quantity of gold or silver in the standard coins then in existence by authority of Congress.  The Senator from Iowa, [Mr. Allison,] in his very able speech the other day, showed that a change in the gold coinage of the country was being seriously agitated by the present Secretary of the Treasury and others high in authority;  hence the explicit declarations as to the preservation of the quantity of coin being retained at the then standard value.

Doubtless, too, they were uneasy, as they might well be, as to the constitutionality of the law of 1869, and were anxious to get clear of any possibility of taxing their bonds, so they caused the provision to be inserted upon the face of them that they could not be taxed for any purpose.  I repeat, when they accepted the proposition of July, 1870, and caused for their own benefit the words to be written on the face of the bond itself that it was to be paid in the standard coin of the United States, and in the act of 1869 gold and silver coin are mentioned expressly as the coin in which they shall be paid, they are estopped to deny our right to pay them in either gold or silver coin of that value.  All the bonds, even those issued last year, as was shown by the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Wallace] the other day, contain the same recital that they shall be paid in the coin of standard value on July 14, 1870.  Will anybody pretend that if any bondholder has silver coin of the then standard value tendered to him he would not get all his contract required;  and are we required to pay the assignees of those men in one currency and the original purchasers of the bonds in another ?  The Government has nothing to do with transfers;  it pays whoever holds the obligation according to the terms.  The law and the form of the bonds are so plain I again read them.  The act of 1870 provided---

That the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized to issue, in a sum or sums not exceeding in the aggregate $200,000,000, coupon or registered bonds of the United States, in such form as he may prescribe and of denominations of $50 or some multiple of that sum, redeemable in coin of the present standard value, at the pleasure of the United States, after ten years from the date of their issue, and bearing interest, payable semi annually in such coin, at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum.

Also, $300,000 of four and a half percents and a thousand million of four percents, all of which were to be payable in coin of the then present standard value.

And the form of the bond is:

Tbe United States of America are indebted to the bearer in the sum of $50.

This bond is issued in accordance with the provisions of an act of Congress entitled "An act to authorize the refunding of the national debt," approved July 14, 1870, as amended by an act approved January 20, 1871, and is redeemable at the pleasure of the United States, after the 1st day of July, 1907, in coin of the standard value of the United States on said July 14, 1870, with interest in such coin from the day of the date hereof at the rate of 4 per cent. per annum, payable quarterly, on the 1st day of October, January, April, and July in each year.  The principal and interest are exempt from the payment of all taxes or duties of the United States, as well as from taxation in any form by or under State, municipal, or local authority.

Washington, July 1, 1877.

Any purchaser can see what the obligation of the United States is by reading the bonds he buys.  We are only bound to comply with the obligation of our contract and to pay it in the standard coin of July, 1870.  Gold and silver were then the standard coins.  The effort to prevent us from having that coin is what I complain of.  What I propose is to restore through the Mint exactly the standard coin we had and to furnish it to the people, so that they can comply with the obligations of the Government and with their own.

I can see no honest excuse for the legislation of 1873.  Congress, having assumed obligations of the character I have read, deprived itself and the people, of the power to pay their debts in the standard silver coin.  I say Congress deprived itself;  I mean that it deprived the tax-payers of this country;  for this Government is a trustee;  this Government is a pauper;  this Government has nothing except the power to tax.  It takes it from everything we all own, from our hats to our boots;  from the cradle to the coffin;  from the small nail driven into the horse's shoe, to the locomotive or the steamship.  When this Government undertakes by legislation to deprive the people, of whom I am one --and my people are many-- of the power to pay their debts in the standard silver coin when the contract was made, and that the creditor himself demanded, they are doing a gross injustice;  and when they undertake to demonetize that silver, as was done by the Revised Statutes, they are doing what the Constitution does not give them the power to do.  For both these reasons, so satisfactory to my mind, I would restore the relation that existed before that time.

We are told that England, the great creditor nation of the world, demonetized silver.  Perhaps she could afford to do it.  We are told that we must follow her example in forcing resumption by law, even with prostrated industries;  and she is held up as the great exemplar.  She is our great antagonist in all the relations of commerce.  We sell her our breadstuffs and we sell her raw material, but our manufactures never go there.  We have to look to the trade of countries with less commercial power and not as far advanced in many regards as England.  We have to look to China, to Japan, to the Indies, to the great islands in the Pacific Ocean;  we have to look to the republics of South America, and when you turn to the tables you find that every one of them is a silver-using country.  The table in Mr. Hunter's report, the table in Dr. Linderman's report, all the tables show that the people with whom we want to trade, from whom alone we can make anything, whose commerce we must seek, are people who are using silver money;  and because England, our rival, has demonetized silver, owing a debt to her own people, which she is somewhat proud of, and we owing it to foreigners because she has done it, we, forsooth, must follow her example and deprive ourselves of the right to use the product of our own country in commerce which England is striving, as she knows so well how to do, to deprive us of.

Why did we spend nearly $100,000,000 in building the Union and Central Pacific Railroads ?  Why did we give lands 1arger than a half-dozen of the kingdoms of Europe to the great railroads that are traversing this continent to reach the Pacific Ocean ?  It was that we might make the West the highway to the East;  that we might send our steamships and our products over the Pacific to those great silver-using countries, to China with four hundred millions of people and to the thirty-odd millions in Japan and the great swarm of people in all those regions whose trade we were seeking.  When we had given a hundred million dollars to build these roads, (for we might as well have given it, I fear we will never get it back,) when we were developing more silver than all the world beside, when Nevada and the other mines were coming to our relief in furnishing the material for a coin cheaper than gold, and which would cheapen gold, the Congress of the United States quietly (I will not yet say clandestinely, because the distinguished Senator from Delaware, one of the ablest men in the Senate, said that it was foolish and unwise for anybody to say that,) but in a very quiet way and with very little discretion, we deprived ourselves of the power of using the silver which was then becoming the metal that we had most of and of which we had more than all the world besides.

Is it not good faith to the people that we should repeal it ?  I hold my allegiance to be good faith to all the people of this country, good faith to the tax-payer;  and when I am acting in good faith to him, I am acting in good faith to a1l the creditors of the country.  But I never will seek to perpetuate any law that has broken down all industries, contracted the currency of the country, and brought upon us the miseries that we now see.  Thousands of men, able and willing to work, are begging for bread.  With bounteous harvests, with trouble in Europe and Asia, which opens up markets to us by withdrawing their competition, when the South is springing to its feet and the States of Louisiana and South Carolina, thank God, at last have come to occupy the same relation to this Government that Vermont and New Hampshire do, all calling for capital, all seeking to develop their industries, now that war and strife are at an end, are we in the midst of all that to stop and say that the people of the States and of the country shall not have the benefit of the silver which is produced in our own country, and that gold shall be put at 8 per cent. premium because we will not allow ourselves to use anything to compete with it ?

Our own paper is refused at the custom-houses.  Why ?  Because that diminishes the interest of the bondholder.  Our own silver is not to be taken because that would diminish the profits of the bondholder.  We cannot use it to pay the debts of the railroads, of the States, and of the corporations, because that would prevent the bondholder from selling the gold that he alone gets from the Government or from purchasing the property of the people at the rate that he can when there is nothing else to compete with it.  As was well said by the Senator from Ohio [Mr. Matthews] the other day, what has silver fallen in comparison with ?  Will it not buy more land, more calico, more of anything than it ever did before ?  It is only in comparison with gold that it has fallen, not in comparison with property.  But I cannot forbear quoting his own words:

Mr. Eaton.  Has it not depreciated in the purchase of every product at home and abroad ?  Can you buy the same amount with the same number of grains of silver that you could with the corresponding degree of some other metal ?

Mr. Matthews.  Has the Senator finished his question ?

Mr. Eaton.  I have.

Mr. Matthews.  Then I answer, and it can be demonstrated by an impregnable array of facts, that silver can to-day buy more of every other known product of human labor than it could in July, 1870, gold alone excepted;  lands, houses, stocks of merchandise, machinery, labor, everything but gold;  here, elsewhere.  In Asia, in Europe, throughout this whole continent, nowhere, measured by the average price of the general commodities of the world, has silver depreciated the breadth of a hair.  On the contrary, it has maintained its position.  It can buy to-day more land, more houses, more machinery, more calico, more cotton, more everything than it could in 1870, the same number of grains of the same standard and fineness.

I read with some interest, the other day, an account of the composition of the English parliament, which is constantly held up before us as an illustrious example in favor of laws demonetizing silver.  That body then represented a very small portion of the people of England.  They had little connection with the mass of the people, although some of our legislators here seem to think they were in 1816 and 1822 a highly representative popular body.  A pamphlet was handed to me the other day, written in answer to a speech of General Garfield in the other House, by J.W. Schuckers, of Philadelphia, in which he gives a very good idea of what that English House of Commons was in 1821 and 1822.  I will read an extract from it:

In the third place, the House of Commons did not at that time index public opinion because of radical defects in its constitution.  The rotten-borough system then prevailed.  The whole population of the kingdom was twenty-one millions, but those who voted for members of the House numbered only four hundred thousand.  The Duke of Norfolk was himself represented by eleven members, Lord Lonsdale by nine, Lord Darlington by seven, and the Duke of Rutland, the Marquis of Buckingham, and Lord Carrington each had six ---forty-three members representing six persons !

These gentlemen were stronger, perhaps, even than our bondholders and railroad kings are here.  I have heard that some of them control a good many;  I do not know, but not in this proportion those english gentlemen did, I hope.

The borough of old Saram had two members, who were elected by one voter, who kept an ale-house, while the great cities of Edinburg, Glasgow, and Bath, with a united population of over four hundred thousand souls, had six members elected by a constituency of 105 voters.  The borough of Bramber had two members, representing a male population of fifty-six persons, while Gratton and Dunwich had four members, two elected by 6 voters, and two by 7.  And so on.  These boroughs were held as a property, Gratton being valued at the good round figure of 100,000 british pounds sterling, or half a million dollars, as a mere investment, because it supplied a seat in the House of Commons !  This was the House of Commons to whose 168 votes on one occasion, and 222 on another, out of 650, General Garfield appeals as "sensitively indexing the public opinion of England" on the resumption question !  A marvelously sensitive index, indeed !

That was the kind of representation in Parliament before the reform bill of 1832;  and it was because such things were done and so little regard was paid to the rights of the people by a Parliament thus elected, and thus constituted, that the reform bill became necessary.  We have had something like it lately.  Eleven States of the South were not only misrepresented but other States were twice represented and the South was forced to furnish them with this double representation.  We have had very bad legislation in times gone by when things were done that could not be done now and never will be again.  The reform bill came in in England.  We have got genuine representation from that part of the country now, and we perhaps can have the legislation that they had after the reform bill passed.  If England is to be held up as an example to us, let us follow her throughout.  She had then under the Parliament thus constituted, protection for everything, and she had a population almost starving and bread riots prevailing time and again.  When a genuine Parliament came in and the people were heard, those shackles were broken.  The great protective tariff was swept away, and now she levies nearly 96 per cent. of all her revenue from seven articles, while we are hanging on to them by the thousand.  She has gone on with her policy and made herself able to bring all the world in debt to her.

What have we done ?  We are bringing ourselves in debt to all the world.  We are paying to-day somewhere about $100,000,000 to foreign nations to do our carrying trade.  In 1860 they were paying us nearly $25,000,000.  England has trebled her great marine;  we have dwindled down to less than half.  We had, with a decent tariff, more tonnage than all the nations of the world, except England, seventeen years ago.  Contrasted with England now, we are a fourth-rate power.  Follow England's example in these things and you will build up industries after a while that will enable you to pay the debt in anything and have all the world in debt to you.  But in our present condition, contributing to every other nation, with no ships on the sea, we pay, as I say, immense sums to foreign nations to do our carrying trade, humiliated everywhere on the ocean.  No nation without commerce can be a first-class nation, none ever has been and none ever will be.  All history attests it.  I say follow her in her commercial policy, and perhaps there will be some justice in following her upon the gold question.

But I said I would refer again to the report of the Finance Committee of the Senate made by Mr. Hunter on the evil effects always produced by a contraction of currency, and the advantages and blessing of an ample supply, and I do it because it is so much better than anything I can say.  That report says:

So much is the value of currency affected by the facility with which it may be counted and its convenience of transportation that there will always be difficulty in supplying the place of small notes with anything but silver or that of large notes with anything but gold.  We require, then, for this reason, the double standard of gold and silver;  but above all do we require both to counteract the tendency of the specie standard to contract under the vast increase of the value of the property of the world.

There is our difficulty.  We have increased in population and wealth in the last ten years enormously.  I am not going into statistics, but I will state this fact:  we have built forty-eight thousand miles of railroad since 1868;  we have added to our wealth and necessity for increased currency in every form.  The States of the South for a long time, six or eight years after the war, could do nothing, had nothing, but they are again on their feet.  They need large amounts of money.  Every thing has grown as a matter of course, and in the midst of this growth of property are we seeking to keep up the specie standard to the property standard and requirements when we have demonetized our silver, of which we produce thirty-seven millions annually in the State of Nevada alone, and all of which could be readily converted into our coin and added to the currency of the world, thus tending to keep down the contraction of the money and increase it as property increases ?

But to continue.  He adds:

We require, then, for this reason, the double standard of gold and silver;  but above all do we require both to counteract the tendency of the specie standard to contract under the vast increase of the value of the property of the world.  And what harm can arise from any probable increase of the precious metals if both are allowed to swell the volume of currency ?  On the contrary, a more beneficial event for the trade, the industry, the world and political condition of the world could scarcely be imagined.  Of all the great effects produced upon human society by the discovery of America, there were probably none so marked as those brought about by the great influx of the precious metals from the New World to the Old.  European industry had been declining under the decreasing stock of precious metals and an appreciating standard of value, human ingenuity grew dull under the paralyzing influences of declining profits, and capital absorbed nearly all that should have been divided between it and labor.  But an increase of the precious metals, in such quantities as to check this tendency, operated as a new motive power to the machinery of commerce.  Production was stimulated by finding the advantages of a change in the standard upon its side.  Instead of being repressed by having to pay more than it had stipulated for the use of capital, it was stimulated by paying less.  Capital, too, was benefited, for new demands were created for it by the new uses which a general movement in industrial pursuits had developed;  so that, if it lost a little by a change in the standard, it gained much more in the greater demand for its use, which added to its capacities for reproduction and to its real value.  Property which had been acquired by the strong arm and accumulated in violation of the great laws of equity and trade by an almost insensible transition was distributed more equally in society.

Nature, under the operation of this its great bankrupt law, as if by an invisible hand, loosened the bonds of the debtor, which heretofore time had continually tightened, and distributed to labor for purposes of reproduction and by equitable terms, capital which distrust and apathy had either locked up or administered with a too sparing hand.  New influences arose in society, and a new impulse was given to its movements.  In the present stage of the world we may, perhaps, no more expect any event to produce such rapid transformations in society.  But we might reasonably look for something like the same consequences from a similar event.  Any system, either of violence or law, which distributes property improperly and unjustly, and which gives a false direction to the great stream of productive industry, will, in the end, produce throes and convulsions in the bosom of society.  Unless human skill, such as is rarely if ever known, intervenes to give a true direction to affairs, or unless nature interferes, through the silent operation of her laws, to remove inequalities and repair injustice, violence is almost sure to be used to make a change if it cannot apply a remedy.

As I said when I read the former extract, Mr. Hunter seems to be warning us against the very condition of things now existing, and deploring the very evils that Congress has now brought upon this country by contracting its standard of value, diminishing its coin, refusing to utilize what Providence seems to have put into our hands, giving to gold alone by refusing to take our own paper or our own silver all the power that all the three ought to have, contracting the currency, diminishing prices, destroying industry, making it impossible for any man to borrow money to-day and invest it in anything that he can have any reasonable assurance will enable him to pay his creditor back the money with interest at the end of a year.  Gentlemen say there is plenty of money in the country.  Of course there is.  There is no safe man who dares borrow it;  hence the enforced idleness of thousands of our most intelligent and industrious laborers;  hence the suffering of the people.  Nobody can go into any business to-day with any expectation of making money.  A man knows if he borrows $10,000 to-day and gives a mortgage on his farm worth $20,000, the chances are that at the end of the year the creditor can hardly get his $10,000 back by the sale of the twenty-thousand-dollar farm.  Hence no man can go into business, and hence money is idle, because all the uses of it are dried up.  That is the condition we are in now, and it is because a repeal of the existing coinage laws as to silver would give at least partial relief that I propose to vote for any bill looking in that direction, whether I like all its provisions or not.

But I must hurry on.  I said among other things that the bondholder, of all men, had the least right to complain.  I have argued that often, shown it in every variety of form, and I do not believe I have heard a statement that showed the truth so boldly, so nakedly, and showed the absurdity of all the complaints now set up here and elsewhere in their behalf, as an extract which I took from a speech of my friend from Indiana [Mr. Voorhees] in a debate that I had in the 43rd Congress, which will be found on page 1403, part 2, of the Record of the 2nd session of the 43rd Congress.  He gave the history of all the bonds that were sold each year and the prices that were paid, and the interest that was given, and when he footed them up, the fact was that the bondholders had, up to 1869, received over $100,000,000 of profit before they even got the principal of their bonds made payable in gold by the act of 1869.  They are the last men, certainly, to complain.  Here is the statement I refer to, and which I read in the other House [Wednesday, February 17, 1875.]:

It would be interesting and perhaps instructive, if time allowed, to show the course of legislation by which this state of things was brought about.  It has, however, been repeatedly exposed by myself and others on this floor, and I will not repeat it now.  I have, however, read with great interest a remarkable speech made by a distinguished gentleman, formerly a member of this House, the Hon. Daniel W. Voorhees, during the late canvass in Indiana, in which the facts bearing upon this subject were so strikingly set forth that I cannot refrain from using a few extracts from it --only remarking that I have not had an opportunity to verify the exact facts stated therein, but have been assured by him lately that they were true and were prepared with great care.  The extract I refer to is as follows:

"In 1862 the Government sold 6 per cent. 5/20 bonds to the amount of $60,982,450, and received for them greenbacks at their face, dollar for dollar.  The demand now is that these bonds shall be paid in gold at their face, and yet, owing to the depreciation of greenbacks at the time of their purchase, only $44,030,649 in gold was paid for them.  This makes a clear speculation of $16,951,801 in favor of the bondholder in this first transaction.  On this clear speculation the bondholders have received interest for eleven years, amounting to $11,187,188, which, added to its principal, makes the sum of $28,138,989 already received in that single transaction, for which not one dollar was ever paid.

"In 1863 the Government sold of the same kind of bonds $160,987,550, for which it received an equal amount in greenbacks.  A standard authority placed the average price of gold during that year at $1.58 in currency.  It will thus be seen that these bonds cost their purchasers but $101,890,854 in gold, leaving a profit of $59,096,696, without including the interest.  For ten years, however, the Government has paid interest on this naked profit, this principal, without any consideration.  The interest thus paid amounts to $35,458,017, which, added to this fictitious principal, makes $94,555,713, now in the pockets of the bondholders on that year's operation, for which they never paid anything.

"In 1864 the Government sold these bonds, amounting on their face to $381,292,250.  Again, the Government received only depreciated paper for these bond obligations, and at that time our currency was enormously depreciated, if tried by the gold standard.  The price of gold during that year was at an average of 201 in currency.  The sale of these bonds, therefore, which are now assumed to be gold bonds, only realized to the Government $189,697,636 in gold, less than one-half of their face value.  There was left to the capitalists, who speculated in them as purchasers, the immense profit of $191,594,614.  This was the amount of the broker's shave, and on it he has drawn interest from the people for ten years, amounting at this time to $114,956,768.  Add this to its principal, which stands as pure speculation, and we find that the bondholders have made as clear gain, as something for nothing, the sum of $306,551,382 on the one year's transaction of 1864.

"In 1865 the Government sold bonds to the amount of $279,746,150, on which it suffered a discount of $71,532,060, at the hands of the capitalists.  The interest already paid by the people on this discount reaches $38,627,307, making this year's operation realize for the bondholders $110,159,367, for which not one cent was ever paid.

"In 1866 the Government sold $124,914,400 of its bonds, for which it received depreciated paper currency amounting to $88,591,773 in gold, according to the then price of gold.  The difference between the face of these bonds and the amount they realized to the Government was $36,332,627.  Eight years' interest received on this shave amounts to $17,434,556.  Adding this interest and its principal together, and we find that the bondholders have received $53,757,183 out of this year's sale of bonds, for which not one dollar ever left their coffers or reached the United States Treasury.

"In 1867 the Government sold of its bonds the immense sum of $421,469,550.  The purchasers paid for them $303,215,503, leaving a clear profit to them on the operation of $118,254,047.  Taking the interest on this profit for seven years, amounting to $49,661,694, already paid, and the speculators have in their pockets, if these bonds are to be paid in gold, the sum of $167,915,741 on this year's brokerage, and for which they never gave a farthing in consideration.

"In 1868 the Government sold its bonds to the still further amount of $425,443,800.  Their purchasers paid $312,826,323 for them, clearing by that annual speculation the sum of $112,617,477.  Add six years' interest on this bonus, amounting to $40,542,288, to the bonus itself, and we find that these traffickers in a nation's perils have received in this operation $153,159,765 of the people's money, for which not the slightest equivalent was ever paid into the United States Treasury.

"In addition to the foregoing 6 per cent. bonds, the Government, at different times, during the years mentioned, issued and sold $195,139,550 of bonds bearing 5 per cent.  They realized to the Government $122,957,410, thus leaving to the purchasers a net profit of $72,182,140.  Interest already paid on this profit amounts to $26,115,724, which, added to the profit itself, makes the sum of $98,297,864 as the amount now in the pockets of the bondholders growing out of their operations in the 5 per cent. bonds, and for which there is not the slightest consideration.

"An account of the bondholders' clear profits arising from no investments at all, may therefore be stated in the following tabular form:

1862 ........................... $28,138,989
1863 .............................. 94,555,713
1864 ............................... 306,551,582
1865 .............................. 110,159,367
1866 ................................. 53,757,183
1867 .................................... 167,915,741
1868 .................................... 153,159,765
On account of 5 percent. bonds ............................................... 98,297,864
Total .......................................... 1,012,536,004."

If these facts are substantially true, and I have no doubt they are, they demonstrate how utterly groundless any complaints on the part of the bondholders would be, if such are in fact made.  When, in addition to all that, we recall the frequent contractions of the currency, made in the face of increasing business and our growing wants, for their benefit, and recall the first act of General Grant's administration, falsely entitled "An act to strengthen the public credit," but really an act to appreciate the bonds and fill the pockets of their holders at the expense of the tax-payers of the country;  and still further couple with all these things the enormous advantages given to them as national bankers, it is impossible to believe that any complaint can come from that class of our creditors, unless it be on the hypothesis that the more they get, the more they want, and that having received so much to which they were not entitled they imagine that tax-payers have no rights which they are bound to respect.

That statement needs no comment;  it was carefully and truthfully prepared.  It will satisfy the country and ought to satisfy the bondholders and their advocates that they ought not to insult a suffering people, whose hard earnings have gone to enrich them, by any complaint of want of good faith to them in the effort we are making to save the country from bankruptcy.

I shall now say something about the passage of the law and the Revised Statutes demonetizing silver.  I have before complained of the way in which these laws were passed.  I want to retain the respect, if I possibly can, of all my colleagues on this floor, and there is no man whose respect I would sooner have than that of the distinguished Senator from Delaware, [Mr. Bayard.]  He said in his speech the other day:

In his report of the present year additional reasons are given by the Director of the Mint for that action --that is, for the passage of the law of February, 1873-- which I will read for a double object, not merely to refute the idea that the measure was adopted without notice or debate or public consideration, or, as has been so foolishly and unjustly charged, "surreptitiously," but also to state reasons that were satisfactory to his mind why it ought to have been done.

I am not sure that I ever stated that it was done surreptitiously, and I hardly know to whom this statement refers, although the Senator from West Virginia and myself were the only ones who had spoken of it on this floor up to that time;  but I think I can show that if there was no other reason for voting to restore the silver dollar to the relation it occupied prior to the passage of that act, the way it was passed by Congress and incorporated into the Revised Statutes should be sufficient to control my action and cause me to vote for its repeal, even if I should afterward vote to repeal the repealing act.  It never was understood by either House of Congress.  I say that with full knowledge of the facts.  No newspaper reporter --and they are the most vigilant men I ever saw in obtaining information-- discovered that it had been done.  The President of the United States, as you will see by the letter which I have before me, and which was referred to by the Senator from West Virginia, six months after it became a law did not know there was any such law passed.  In a letter written October 3, 1873, to Mr. Cowdry, General Grant said:

I wonder that silver is not already coming into the market to supply the deficiency in the circulating medium.  Experience has proved that it takes about $40,000,000 of fractional currency to make the small change necessary for the transaction of the business of the country.  Silver will gradually take the place of this currency;  and, further, will become the standard of values, which will be hoarded in a small way.  I estimate that this will consume from 200,000,000 to $300,000,000 of this species of our circulating medium.  I confess to a desire to see a limited hoarding of money.  But I want to see a hoarding of something that is a standard of value the world over.  Silver is this.  Our mines are now producing almost unlimited amounts of silver, and it is becoming a question, "What shall we do with it ?"  I suggest here a solution which will answer for some years, to put it in circulation, keeping it there until it is fixed, and then we will find other markets.

The law, be it remembered, was approved by him February 12, 1873.

I have before me every print of those bills that I could find, beginning in the Forty-first Congress with the one that then passed the Senate, and following them up till the law was passed, and I assert that there was not a single one of these bills, either in the Forty-first Congress or the Forty-second Congress, that did more than drop the standard silver dollar and not refer to it at all otherwise than by indirection, to prohibit its future coinage.  There was not one of them that demonetized it;  none of them took away its legal-tender quality.  After providing for other inferior coins, there was a provision that these are the only silver coins which shall be coined.  Not one of them ever interfered otherwise with the standard dollar of 412½ grains and said it should not be a legal tender or named it at all so as to attract attention to it, and I suppose if there was a subject relative to which the members of both Houses were profoundly ignorant and as to which, when no coins were ever seen by any who were not bondholders, they were wholly indifferent, it was as to the laws relative to mints and coinage, when the bill first came up in the House in the Forty-first Congress.

There was a short discussion in January, 1872, in which Mr. McCormick, of Missouri, and Mr. Holman insisted that the provisions of the bill would make a great many more officers and would increase salaries, and Mr. Kelley and others insisted that it would not.  The debate was confined then to the question of salaries.  When Mr. Hooper brought it up again, on the 9th of April, (and remember it was brought up then under an order that it should be taken up and made the special order from day to day until disposed of,) and after an explanation of it by Mr. Hooper, in which he spoke of the other coins provided for, but said nothing specially on demonetization of the silver dollar, Mr. Stoughton, who argued it more elaborately than any one else and argued it with very great ability, among other things, said:

The silver coins provided for are the dollar, 384 grains troy, the half dollar, quarter dollar, and dime of the value and weight of one half, one quarter, and one tenth of the dollar respectively; and they are made a legal tender for all sums not exceeding five dollars at any one payment.  The silver dollar, as now issued, is worth for bullion 3½ cents more than the gold dollar, and 7 cents more than two half dollars.  Having a greater intrinsic than nominal value, it is certain to be withdrawn from circulation whenever we return to specie payment;  and to be used only for manufacture and exportation as bullion.

Mr. Kelley said:

Again, sir, by a mistake in our law it has become impossible to retain an American silver dollar in this country except in collections of curiosities.  They would, if coined in considerable numbers, be a source of enormous profit to the silver bullion dealers of New York.  Let me show you.  The silver dollar required by our laws is worth three and a half cents more than our gold dollar, and is worth seven cents more than two half dollars.  Now, sir, let us get back, as the gentleman desires, to specie payment before we legislate upon the mint laws, and you will have an interest of from one million to many million dollars a year here with its lobby in and around the House to prevent the Government from the possibility of losing a few dollars by substituting copper-nickel for copper and copper-bronze coinage.

He then went on to argue that that ought not to be;  that we had to save it by reducing the value of the standard silver dollar.  The bill was ordered to be read by sections for amendment.  Great opposition was made to it.  Mr. Potter, of New York, and others insisted that, as long as we had no legal-tender gold or silver, this great question ought not to be taken up and that we ought to wait until it could be fully discussed.  Only the first seven sections were reached in the reading.  It was a bill of sixty-seven sections and the provisions we are now discussing were in the fifteenth and sixteenth sections.  That portion of the bill was never reached;  and those sections were never read, so as to give any chance to discuss or amend them, when the House adjourned and the bill was never again called up, although by the order of the House it was made the special order from day to day until completed.  So much for the discussion in April.  On the 27th of May (see page 3882 of the Congressional Globe) Mr. Hooper called it up on his own motion, not, as I understand, by order of the committee.  The House had agreed to adjourn on the 29th of May and motions to suspend the rules were of course in order.  Less than forty-eight hours of the time remained when Mr. Hooper brought up his substitute for the bill which had been so summarily disposed of in April;  notwithstanding this authority given by the House to proceed from day to day with it.  He then said --and I shall only read very brief extracts as the matter has been up in the Senate before---

I desire to call up the bill H.R. No. 1427 --The bill which had been discussed in April-- I do so for the purpose of offering an amendment to the bill in the nature of a substitute, one which has been very carefully prepared and which I have submitted to the different gentlemen in this House who have taken a special interest in the bill.  I move that the rules be suspended and that the substitute be put on its passage.

Objection was made.  Mr. Hooper protested that at that hour of the session, as it was a long bill, there was no necessity for reading it because it had been carefully examined by those who desired to examine its provisions.  The House, however, refused to allow the bill to be passed in that way, and then he called it up again and moved to suspend the rules and pass it, and have the substitute read.  That is, the bill he offered as a substitute for House bill No. 1427.

The Record says "the Clerk began to read."  Then the House, seeing that it was a bill of that character, and, of course, all impatient at the closing hours of the session, began to ask questions.  Mr. Brooks protested against its being passed in Mr. Potter's absence.  Mr. Hooper refused to wait, because he said there was no time.  Several parliamentary questions were raised, and Mr. Holman put this question to Mr. Hooper, the manager of the bill:

Mr. Holman.  Before the question is taken upon suspending the rules and passing the bill, I hope the gentleman from Massachusetts will explain the leading changes made by this bill in the existing law, especially in reference to the coinage.  It would seem that all the small coinage of the country is intended to be recoined.

Mr. Hooper, of Massachusetts.  This bill makes no changes in the existing law in that regard.  It does not require the recoinage of the small coins.

What was the fair meaning of that question and answer ?  It was, that this is a bill to regulate the mints;  this is a bill merely of machinery;  this is a bill merely to enable the Director of the Mint to go on and coin more money because of the increased volume of silver bullion there is now in the country, all of which seemed to be requisite and proper.  Why did Mr. Hooper answer the question of Mr. Holman, to explain the leading changes of this bill in the existing law, especially in reference to coinage, by saying that the bill makes no changes in the existing law in that regard, if he knew that it did ?  That answer satisfied Mr. Holman and the House.  Nothing more was said on material points, and the bill passed as a mere bill regulating mint machinery.

Some stress was laid the other day in discussion on a remark which Mr. McCormick, of Missouri, made in calling for the nineteenth section to be read again.  A mint bill, as I said, had been up in January.  Mr. McCormick, of Missouri, had protested against the increase of salaries.  He wanted, when Mr. Hooper said it made no increase of salaries, to have that branch read over again;  and he missed the section, it seems, for the nineteenth was only about the devices to be put on the coin and the inscriptions that were to be used.  After that interruption, and the assurances that I have read were given, no part of that bill ever was read except that nineteenth section which Mr. McCormick called for.  The reading which had been interrupted was never resumed, and the bill was passed almost unanimously without anybody knowing anything about it.

There were many very vigilant men in that body.  I have seen Mr. Holman, of Indiana, during the vacation and he will assure anybody that he was watching it and that it never was read.  Many of us were there.  I do not care to say what I know myself;  I never yet heard a member say that he understood it to be anything else but a bill such as Mr. Hooper stated to Mr. Holman.  Mr. Garfield made a speech in a debate with Mr. Pendleton in Ohio last fall in which he said:

Perhaps I ought to be ashamed to say so, but it is the truth to say that I, at that time being chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, and having my hands overfull during all that time with work, I never read the bill.  I took it upon the faith of a prominent democrat and a prominent republican, and I do not know that I voted at all.  There was no call of the yeas and nays, and nobody opposed that bill that I know of.  It was put through as dozens of bills are, as my friend and I know, in Congress, on the faith of the report of the chairman of the committee;  therefore I tell you, because it is the truth, that I have no knowledge about it.

And I suppose every member of that House would say substantially the same thing except the few who were thoroughly advised.  The press admit that they knew nothing about it.  The President showed that he knew nothing about it.  No member of the House has yet said to anybody anywhere, in any speech that I know of, that he knew about it;  while all, that I have seen or heard of, have admitted their ignorance of these provisions.

The bill went from the House to the Senate.  It was taken up here at the third session of that Congress.  Let us see what took place then.  When it came here it was in charge of the chairman of the Committee on Finance, Hon. John Sherman.  On page 203 of the Globe of the 3rd session of the 42nd Congress, part 1, he, as chairman of the Committee on Finance, announced that it had passed the Senate substantially in the Forty-first Congress;  that it was not worth while to read it;  that it could be passed in a shorter time than it would take to read it, and he insisted, as I said, that the same bill had passed in substance in the 41st Congress.  Let me give his words:

I am directed by the Committee on Finance, to whom was referred the bill (H.R. No. 2934) revising and amending the laws relative to the mints and assay offices and coinage of the United States, to report it back with two or three amendments.  This bill has in substance passed both Houses, except that the Senate bill enlarged and increased the salaries of officers of the Mint.  It was passed by the Senate at the last session of the last Congress, went to the House, and now, somewhat modified, has passed the House at this Congress, so that the bill has practically passed both Houses of Congress. The Senate Committee on Finance propose the modification of only a single section;  but as this is not the same Congress that passed the bill in the Senate, I suppose it will have to go through the form of a full reading, unless the Senate are willing to take it on the statement of the committee, the Senate having already debated it at length and passed it.  It would have to be read in full unless the Senate by unanimous consent allow it to pass without a formal reading.

The bill was, however, required to lie over under the objection of the gentleman who I believe generally calls for the regular order, the Senator from Vermont, [Mr. Edmunds,] and it came up again later for debate;  and on page 672, part 1, of the Globe, third session Forty-second Congress, debate on it was had, and there the same statements were made by the chairman that the bill had in substance passed the Senate in the Forty-first Congress, that it had at the former session of that Congress passed the House, and the debate which sprang up shows that there was not one word uttered as to the demonetization of silver from beginning to end.  The California, Nevada, and Oregon Senators were protesting against the coinage charge, and that was the only thing that was debated at all.  The gentleman who had charge of the bill was insisting that they were going to issue a silver dollar that would circulate all over the world, and he wanted to change the inscriptions on it from the American eagle, which he said would not be understood, to the words "In God we trust," and the true value of the coin, so that everybody could see it.  Let me quote his own language:

I rise for the purpose of moving that the Senate proceed to the consideration of the Mint bill.  I will state that this bill will not probably consume any more time than the time consumed in reading it.  It passed the Senate two years ago after full debate.  It was taken up again in the House during the present Congress, and passed there.  It is a matter of vital interest to the Government, and I am informed by officers of the Government it is important it should pass promptly.  The amendments reported by the Committee on Finance present the points of difference between the two Houses, and they can go to a committee of conference without having a controversy here in the Senate about them.

Again:

If the Senator will allow me, he will see that the preceding section provides for coin which is exactly interchangeable with the English shilling and the five-franc piece of France;  that is, a five-franc piece of France will be the exact equivalent of a dollar of the United States in our silver coinage;  and in order to show this wherever our silver coin shall float --and we are providing that it shall float all over the world-- we propose to stamp upon it, instead of our eagle, which foreigners may not understand, and which they may not distinguish from a buzzard, or some other bird, the intrinsic fineness and weight of the coin.  In this practical utilitarian age the officers of the Mint seemed to think it would be better to do that than to put the eagle on our silver coins.  I must confess I do not think it is very important;  but I think the Senator ought to be willing to defer in these matters to the practical knowledge of the officers who have charge of this branch of the Government service.  I will say that Mr. Linderman, whom the Senator must know, has suggested this as being a convenient mode of promoting international coinage.

This bill proposes a silver coinage exactly the same as the French, and what are called the associated nations of Europe, who have adopted the international standard of silver coinage;  that is, the dollar provided for by this bill is the precise equivalent of the five-franc piece.  It contains the same number of grams of silver;  and we have adopted the international gram instead of the grain for the standard of our silver coinage.  The "trade dollar" has been adopted mainly for the benefit of the people of California, and others engaged in trade with China.  That is the only coin measured by the grain instead of by the gram.  The intrinsic value of each is to be stamped upon the coin.

From that debate Senators would certainly infer that they were going to establish a silver coinage that would use up and take away all the silver in the mines of Nevada.  Senator Casserly had announced that Nevada was then producing $20,000,000 a year, and that would go far toward supplying the Chinese trade;  and all the debate in the Senate went on to show that it was a bill which was to extend the circulation of silver, and was not by any means to cripple it.

But the strangest part of this transaction remains to be told.  The bill as it passed the House, and all the bills that had been presented in the House, and all the bills in the Forty-first Congress which had been before the Senate, and I have them all here before me, had failed to demonetize the old silver dollar of 412½ grains.  They had simply substituted a silver dollar of a different quality, because, they said, that silver dollar was worth more than the gold dollar by 3½ cents, and the Senate was told by the then chairman of the Committee on Finance that the bill he was tendering to them was a bill substantially similar to those they had passed in the Forty-first Congress and substantially similar to that which had passed the House;  and yet, when you came to examine the bill that was laid before the Senate, and which became a law, all those provisions in section 16 of the House bill and of the former bills which declared---

That the silver coins of the United States shall be a dollar, half-dollar or fifty-cent piece, a quarter-dollar or twenty five cent piece, and a dime or ten-cent piece;  and the weight of the dollar shall be three hundred and eighty-four grains;  the half-dollar, quarter-dollar and the dime shall be, respectively, one-half, one-quarter, and one-tenth of the weight of said dollar;  which coins shall be a legal tender, at their nominal value, for any amount not exceeding five dollars in any one payment.

That the silver coins of the United States shall be a trade-dollar, a half-dollar, or fifty-cent piece, a quarter-dollar, or twenty-five-cent piece, a dime, or ten-cent piece;  and the weight of the trade-dollar shall be four hundred and twenty grains troy;  the weight of the half-dollar shall be twelve grams and one-half of a gram;  the quarter-dollar and the dime shall be, respectively, one-half and one-fifth of the weight of said half-dollar;  and said coins shall be a legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding five dollars in any one payment.

It will be observed that instead of 384 as the House had passed it, 420 grains, eight grains more than the old silver dollar which they said was over valued 3½ per cent. as it stood at 412, was added to make what was called a trade-dollar by the Senate, and the dollar of 384 grains passed by the House was wholly ignored.  I hold in my hand the law which makes provision that the silver coins of the United States shall be a trade-dollar and the weight of the trade-dollar shall be 420 grains troy.  That provision the House never saw.  That body had passed a bill reducing the value of the standard silver dollar from 412 to 384 grains because, if they knew anything about it, of its excessive value over gold, as their committee represented.  The Senate inserted the provision, increased the weight of the only dollar allowed eight grains above the old one, and I have traced the Record from beginning to end this morning in vain to find where either House was told of the change or why it was made;  I may have overlooked it.  I think not.  The bill was referred to a committee of conference;  that conference committee reported to their respective Houses without a word of explanation in either;  the report was adopted and the bill passed.  No man opened his mouth to explain one word of it, and no man, unless previously advised, could tell, in my opinion, what that conference report meant.  The House was never told by one of the conferees.  The Senate, of course, was presumed to know.  Nor was the House informed in any other way that I know, unless some of them got hold of the Senate printed bill.  They were never told on the floor of the House by anybody that the silver dollar of 412 grains, instead of being reduced to 384 because of its superior value to gold of 3½ per cent., had been in fact increased to 420 grains;  and the conference report shows that no explanation was made to the House, and nobody, unless he had taken pains to ferret out what the conference report meant, would be likely to understand what it did mean.

That gives a general idea of the way the standard silver dollar was stricken from the coinage.  What followed ?  The Revised Statutes came next, and every man who remembers the history of the revision, will remember that every possible assurance was given by the managers of that bill that no change was or should be made by them in existing laws.  Any provision of those statutes changing existing laws was and is a fraud upon the country, whether so intended or not, and should be now corrected as we would correct an error or change in an enrolled bill.  At the first session of the Forty-third Congress the Revised Statutes were brought up, and when they were laid before the House the pledge was given in every conceivable form by the men who were managing the bill that there should be no change made in the existing law, that no word should be used that could by any possibility alter the sense of any existing law, that to the dotting of the i and the crossing of the t the sense and the language should be retained as far as was consistent with making a proper collection of the statutes under proper headings.  General Butler first laid them before the House, and said:

I desire to premise here that your committee felt it their bounden duty not to allow, so far as they could ascertain, any change of the law.  This embodies the law as it is.  The temptation, of course, was very great, where a law seemed to be imperfect, to perfect it by the alteration of words or phrases, or to make some change;  but that temptation has, so far as I know and believe, been resisted.  We have not attempted to change the law in a single word or letter so as to make a different reading or different sense.  All that has been done is to strike out the obsolete parts and to condense and consolidate and bring together statutes in pari materia, so that you have here, except in so far as it is human to err, the laws of the United States under which we now live.  And it will be necessary, if the bill passes Congress, that it shall pass without any one undertaking to amend the law as it stands in this revision, because once beginning to amend the revision by altering the law from what it is, will lead into an interminable sea, in which we shall never find soundings and which will never find a shore.  But if there be any omission of any provision of law, the theory of revision is that, that it shall be applied;  and to that the committee desire to call the attention of the House.

Judge Poland followed General Butler, and said:

As my friend from Massachusetts said, the committee have endeavored to have this revision a perfect reflex of the existing national statutes.  We felt aware that if anything was introduced by way of change into those statutes, it would be impossible that the thing should ever be carried through the House.  In the multitude of matters that come before Congress for consideration, if we undertake to perfect and amend the whole body of the national statutes, there is an end of any expectation that the thing would be carried through either House of Congress, and therefore the committee have endeavored to eliminate from this everything that savors of change, in the slightest degree, of the existing statutes.

And he elaborated it in every form.  I have references here to eight or ten different places where on questions by Mr. Maynard, of Tennessee, questions by myself, questions by other gentlemen, they all agreed;  and in the Senate the same debate was had, all agreeing here, as in the House, that no change in any way, so as to alter the sense of existing law, was to be made in the Revised Statutes;  yet what do we find ?  At page 712 of the Revised Statutes is the distinct provision demonetizing all the silver coins of the United States and saying they shall not be received for any sum except $5 in value.  We had not in one of the laws previous to that time demonetized the old standard silver dollar.  Every outstanding dollar of that day was a legal tender for all debts, public and private, for all amounts;  and when the Revised Statutes said that all silver coins of the United States should be degraded so as to be a legal tender only for $5 they changed the law of the land in violation of all the pledges of the men in both Houses who had the management of them, and reduced the standard dollar of 412½ grains to a subsidiary coin that could not be tendered to anybody for over $5, when prior to the revision, even after the law of February 12, 1873, every outstanding silver dollar was a legal tender for all debts, public and private, by States, people, corporations, Government, everybody.  I said that even if I should again vote to repeal that law to-morrow, a law that was put upon the Revised Statutes in direct violation of the pledges of all the men who were managing them, whether it got there by accident or design, I would correct it;  I would set aside the fraud, if it were a fraud, and correct the mistake, if it were a mistake.  I would not allow the revision which professed not to change anything to destroy all the then existing silver coin of the country.  How much there was I do not know, but I know that even before 1854, when the silver half dollar and quarter were reduced in value and limited in legal-tender quality, we had over $100,000,000 of full legal-tender silver coin, and I know that the Government of the United States has no way of destroying that money or taking it out of the Treasury except by appropriations made by Congress, and nothing of that sort had been done.  How much had been melted at the mints on private account I do not know, but I know that this act demonetized whatever there was of it, and there was a large amount, because this book of Dr. Linderman shows that the very year before it was demonetized, to wit, in 1872, we had coined 1,112,961 of one-dollar pieces of the value of 412½ grains, or 371¼ grains of pure silver, and in the fraction of the year 1873, prior to the demonetization, we had coined $977,150, making very nearly two million of silver one-dollar pieces that had been coined from 1872 up to the demonetization in February, 1873.  It was in my opinion because it was known that silver was flowing into this country from Nevada, just as Mr. Casserly had said in the debate;  it was because it was known that Germany was demonetizing it and that silver was going to be cheap and we were going to be able to pay our obligations in a coin that would cost us less and was more easily attainable than gold, which was held in the hands of a few men and was increasing in value and more difficult to procure if the holders of gold, our creditors and their allies, could only get clear of the silver dollar;  it was because of that and to effect that object that the law of 1873 was passed, and passed in the way it was;  and it was to promote the same object that silver was demonetized by the Revised Statutes.

Dr. Linderman has furnished us a book, and I have said that as long as he is at the head of the Mint we shall never have any fair silver coinage.  I cannot dismiss him;  this Senate cannot, but we can pass stringent laws and compel him to obey them.  In his book he contradicts himself and shows his hostility to the silver coinage in the most unmistakable form.  He says, at page 44:

The silver dollar had already become obsolete in fact;  the law of 1873 merely conformed to that fact.

And yet in the previous year, 1872, and in the year 1873, we had coined more than double as many silver dollars as we had coined in any one year during the whole existence of the Government.  I do not know anything about the publication of this book.  It was laid on my desk and I suppose on the desk of every member.  But I read on:

This important feature of the coinage act of 1873 had been agreed upon by Congress before it became apparent that a serious decline in the value of silver was likely to take place, in consequence of the change from the silver to the gold standard by the German Empire;  and this change in reality could have had no influence in determining the question.

Observe that the Director of the Mint in his published book tells us that this important feature of demonetizing or striking out the coinage of the standard silver dollar of 412½ grains had been agreed on by Congress before it was apparent that a serious decline in the value of silver was likely to take place in consequence of the change from the silver to the gold standard by the German Empire, and this change in reality could have had no influence in determining the question.

When was this important feature of the coinage act agreed upon ?  February 12, 1873;  never before.  Turn to the next chapter of his book.  There, forgetting, perhaps, what he had said, he says:

The following extract from a report made by the author to the Secretary of the Treasury, November 19, 1872, at which time the coinage act of 1873 was pending in Congress, shows the grounds on which the coinage of the trade-dollar was authorized by that act.

He goes on to show what he reported in September, 1872, five months before this bill became a law, and he had told us three pages before that they agreed on it before they knew there was going to be any fall in the price of silver.  He tells the Secretary --and that no doubt was at the bottom of the movement for a trade-dollar of 420 grains being substituted for the dollar of 384-- what is likely to happen.  But let me read his own report, which he here quotes:

Among these causes may be stated the increasing production, its demonetization by the German Empire, and continued disuse in this country, except to a limited extent, as part of the circulating medium.

It has also been demonetized by Japan, while in some other countries silver coin has been wholly or partially expelled from circulation by paper money, the effect of which will be to bring to market as bullion large amounts hitherto used as coin.  The amount of silver coin in the German Empire at the date of the enactment of the recent coinage law, (December, 1871,) which changed the standard from silver to gold, is estimated by competent authority at $350,000,000, being equal to five years' total production of the globe.

Even if silver should be adopted by Germany for subsidiary coinage, not more than $50,000,000 will be required for that purpose, which will leave $300,000,000, or about nine thousand tons, to be disposed of as bullion.  A market for this immense supply of silver can only be found in such of the European states as maintain the single standard of silver or the double standard of gold and silver, and in China and the Indies.

The facts above stated indicate the gradual but eventually certain adoption of the gold standard, and consequent demonetization of silver by all commercial countries.  Not only is the tendency to adopt gold as the sole standard and measure value, but to use paper money redeemable in gold as the bulk of the circulating medium.

The true policy of this country under these circumstances is to seek a market in China for its silver bullion;  and to do this it must be put in form to meet a favorable reception in that empire.

Five months before tho demonetization bill passed he is telling the Secretary that the demonetization of Germany will bring silver down and we must put it in a shape that it can be used in China;  he says it is falling in price, and yet he has the assurance to tell us in a printed book that when Congress passed that law it was before it was apparent that a serious decline in the value of silver would take place.  Five months before it became a law he had warned the Secretary of the decline and begged him to make a trade-dollar containing eight grains more silver than the old dollar had contained, in order to meet the necessary fall.  That is the authority that is relied upon here by distinguished Senators, and we are sought to be silenced by the weight of his authority as being conclusive upon us that we ought not to do anything without following the advice of the experts, of whom he is called the head.  No, sir;  I say that book of Dr. Linderman on its face in these two statements shows that it is unworthy of reliance.  Of course many of his facts are true;  his tables are true;  his tables are the tables furnished by Mr. Hunter;  his tables are the tables furnished by Mr. Ingham as far as they then went, and are of course entitled to consideration.

I have, Mr. President, in this vague, general way presented the reasons that influence me in voting for the restoration of the silver dollar with proper guards, giving to the people of the United States the benefits of the coinage and the profits which inure from it, having no sort of doubt that in a very few years gold and silver will come together at about the standard they occupied before the law of 1873 was passed;  that with the immense demand for silver in China and Japan, and all the Indian and Eastern nations, the use that is now made of it all over South America, with the almost certainty in my mind that the nations composing the Latin union, France, Switzerland, and others, will again restore silver to their coinage;  that England will not be able with all her wealth and all her power to drive the other nations of the world away from its use which has been the coinage of the world from time immemorial, and that it will become the interest of our bondholders, and that they will act accordingly when they find that the standard silver dollar is to be paid to them for the interest on their bonds, to aid us in bringing together the two metals and not keep them apart as now, and that when we enable the silver and the paper of the country to take part in bearing the burdens of commerce we will thereby reduce gold and bring them together, and as the property of the world is rising in value, as the property of this country would with reasonable encouragement to our labor rise more rapidly than that of any other, we ought, instead of contracting the currency of the world, seek to add to it and keep it up by every means in our power;  and as a debtor nation especially it behooves us, if we are going to be true to ourselves and true to our people, to use every instrumentality we honestly and legally can to enable us to pay our debts without reducing the value of our property.

It will be far better for our creditors, because you know, Mr. President, every Senator knows, that for the last year or two, ever since contraction has begun, the values of all property have fallen --fallen from a third to a half;  that the sheriff is at every man's door.  Bankruptcy is staring in the face the honest labor of the country, and when you destroy labor you destroy the very source of wealth, for in its last analysis it all comes from the sweat of the poor man's face, and the capitalist will find himself after awhile worse off than he is now if he determines to stand by and see all industries crushed, all labor go unrewarded merely that he may buy the property of the debtor for one-half what it would be worth if that debtor had only a chance to work;  for that is all that the people want, a chance to earn their bread, and let the commerce of the country, the industry of the country, and the great resources of the greatest country upon Earth have fair play.  I regard the passage of the bill as one of the steps necessary to be taken to obtain these results.

I do not pretend to say that the recoinage of the silver dollar is all I want or all that the country needs, but I would restore it to the currency as an aid in building up the industries of the country.  I would not force gold payments upon the people in their present condition.  I would let them prepare the way for it by trade and commerce.  I would do away with the great tariff taxation that was put on them to protect a few men and take money out of the pockets of the great mass of the people to give it to protected classes.

I would do all that in me lay by repealing the resumption act, by restoring the silver dollar, by receiving legal-tenders at the custom-houses, by rearranging the tariff upon a basis of revenue, to bring about these results.  Until that is done we can have no commerce, and without commerce we cannot be a great people.  I would diminish taxation wherever I could;  I would build up the States, North and South, and bring them together in fraternal relations again.  The creditors of the country as well as the debtors of the country will be benefited when these things are done.

Mr. President, I shall not longer detain the Senate.