The Silver Dollar.

Mr. Allison. Before the doors are closed I ask leave to report a bill.  The Committee on Finance; to whom was referred the bill (H.R. No. 1093) to authorize the free coinage of the standard silver dollar, and to restore its legal-tender character, report it with sundry amendments.

The Vice-President.  The bill will be placed on the Calendar.

Coinage of Silver Dollars.

Mr. Allison submitted the following amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill (H.R. No. 1093) to authorize the free coinage of the standard silver dollar, and to restore its legal-tender character;  which was ordered to lie on the table and be printed.

Add to the bill:

Sec. 2. That immediately after the passage of this act the President shall invite the governments of the countries composing the Latin Union, so called, and of such other European nations as he may deem advisable to join the United States in a conference to adopt a common ratio of legal tender as between gold and silver for the purpose of establishing, internationally, the use of bimetallic money, and securing fixity of relative value between those metals;  such conference, to be held at such place, in Europe or in the United States, at such time within six months as may be mutually agreed upon by the executives of the governments joining in the same whenever the governments so invited or any three of them shall have signified their willingness to unite in the same. The President shall, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoint three commissioners, who shall attend such conference on behalf of the United States and shall report the doings thereof to the President, who shall transmit the same to Congress. Said commissioners shall each receive the sum of $2,500 and their reasonable expenses, to be approved by the Secretary of State, and the amount necessary to pay such compensation and expenses is hereby appropriated out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated.

Coinage of Silver Dollars.

The Vice-President.  The morning hour has expired, and the Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, resumes the consideration of the bill (H.R. No. 1093) to authorize the free coinage of the standard silver dollar and to restore its legal-tender character, upon which the Senator from Connecticut [Mr. Eaton] is entitled to the floor.

Mr. Matthews.  I ask the Senator from Connecticut to yield to me for a moment to make a statement in reference to an interruption that I made yesterday of the Senator from Delaware, [Mr. Bayard.]

Mr. Eaton.  With great pleasure.

Mr. Matthews.  Yesterday, Mr. President, I understood the Senator from Delaware who addressed the Senate to make a statement respecting recent legislative action in the republic of France prohibiting the absolute coinage of the silver five-franc piece.  I questioned the accuracy of that statement and inquired of the Senator if he felt quite sure that it extended any further than a prohibition against the coinage of the five-franc piece on private account;  and I understood him to say that it was an absolute prohibition not only on private account but on public account.  I now wish to call the attention of the Senate and of that Senator especially to the authority which I had in my mind for raising the question which I took the liberty of doing.  I hold in my hand the London Economist of January 19, 1878, the latest number of that periodical which has appeared in this country, and which is regarded, I believe, as very high authority on questions of that character, and on the sixty-sixth page I find the following statement which I suppose refers to the matter in controversy.  It is in an article under the head of foreign correspondence---

France-- "from our own correspondent," and dated in Paris, the 17th of January:

In the senate on Saturday the minister of finance laid on the table a bill to prolong the right of the government to limit or suspend the coinage of silver five-franc pieces for private individuals.  The law was voted in August, 1876, and would have expired at the end of the present month.  It is very probable that had the expiration of the law escaped the attention of the minister, the silver deposited at the Bank of France would have been immediately sent in to the mint for coinage before the government could obtain an extension of the law from the chambers.

So that, on the authority of this paper, I was right in stating my belief that the matter referred to was simply a suspension of the right of individuals to have coined at the French mint silver bullion into five-franc pieces for their benefit.

Mr. Bayard.  Mr. President, in 1865, I believe, at the time the so-called Latin union for monetary purposes was formed between the states of France, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland, and in which Greece I believe was afterward included, the French government called in all its subsidiary coin that had theretofore borne the same standard of fineness as the larger coin;  and following the course of the Government of the United States under the act of 1853, it debased this subsidiary coin about 6 per cent. in order that it should be retained in circulation, and that of course was coined only on government account.  No private citizen could bring his bullion to the mint and have it stamped at a false value or have it gain by the government's stamp, because the exercise of the public authority in declaring the value of the subsidiary coin positively was of course for the public benefit, and not for private benefit.  But in 1867, when this union was formed, one of the stipulations, as I understand, between those governments, parties to this treaty was that year by year the commissioners of the several governments meeting in council should settle how much of silver, legal-tender silver at the rate of 15½ per cent. of silver to 1 of gold, should be put in circulation and coined by each member of that confederacy.

So that if France had the power of coining legal-tender five-franc pieces limited by treaty stipulation, it was impossible that her mints should be opened to free coinage for private purposes;  and to say that an unlimited coinage and a free coinage of silver existed in France since the formation of the Latin union would be in the face of the stipulations of that union itself, because each member of it was limited to a certain amount of silver. And let me say that Belgium in the last year, although authorized to issue a certain number of millions of francs, did not do so, because they knew that unless they controlled the emission of their silver, it being cheaper relatively than gold, it would drive the gold out of circulation, and therefore they would not let silver pass into circulation with the gold. Now, the date of the honorable Senator's information, I think, was the 19th of January. The extract which I read in answer recited a telegraphic dispatch dated in Paris the 27th of January.

Mr. Matthews.  That refers to the passage of the bill of which this refers to the introduction.

Mr. Bayard.  I will read it precisely.  It will speak for itself.  A telegraphic dispatch of January 29, from Paris, says:

The senate on Monday unanimously approved the bill renewing the temporary suspension of the obligation of the French mint to coin any silver taken thither.  During the discussion, M. Leon Say, minister of finance, said that the measure was made necessary by the American situation, international commerce with India, and the condition of the German money market, and that the Latin monetary standard would have to be discussed and settled hereafter.  In this view M. De Parien, the eminent statesman and senator from Cantal, agreed, while urging the speedy adoption of a gold standard.

You will observe the first line of this dispatch is, "reviewing the temporary suspension of the obligation of the French mint to coin any silver taken thither."

Mr. Allison.  Taken thither by whom ?

Mr. Bayard.  Taken thither by any one.  Therefore I said that there was no free coinage in France, and that to-day the gold coinage of France could not be continued nor their gold kept in circulation if they did not regulate the supply of silver in opposition to it;  and I may say that France has been saved from the troubles consequent upon this false adjustment of relative values of the two metals by remaining on a paper basis.  That paper basis was removed on the 1st of January, 1878, and the last three weeks in that country have been prolific of trouble to them on this account, so that they are resorting to an enormous depletion and reduction of their paper money, I believe to the amount of five hundred million francs, $100,000,000;  and why ?  It is because they propose to bring as little into competition with their gold, at the rates at which they have undervalued it, as possible, for it will be found in vain, Latin union or no Latin union, monarchy or republic, democracy or empire;  it matters not;  the people of a country will never use the dearer money when they can obtain the cheaper;  and unless, in setting the two currencies afloat, their relative bullion value in the markets of the world shall be observed, no union and no law and no form of government can escape the inevitable result:  they will lose the money which has been undervalued.

Mr. Eaton.  Mr. President---

Mr. Matthews.  Just a moment longer, with the permission of the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. Eaton.  I will yield for a moment.  It was to be but for a moment originally, but it has gone on fifteen minutes.

Mr. Matthews.  Mr. President, I had no controversy with the Senator from Delaware upon the question whether there was or was not free coinage in France.  The statement he made was that all coinage of silver five-franc pieces had been prohibited by a recent enactment.  I questioned the accuracy of that statement and said that it was limited to coinage on private account.  In reply to that he read the telegram which he has repeated to-day, and which I had previously seen in the public newspapers, and which implies just what this statement in the London Economist expresses, and that is that it prohibits the coinage only of bullion that is taken to the mint by some person and not bullion ordered to be coined by the government.

There has been no free coinage in France since the agreement between the members of the Latin union to limit respectively the amount which should be coined by each nation.  That is fixed by treaty or agreement, is fixed for each year, and under that the government pledges itself neither to coin nor to permit coining beyond the amount allotted to each member of the union.  In order to carry out the stipulations of that agreement, the French government have a law in force prohibiting individuals from going to the mint and demanding the coinage of their bullion, and that is a temporary law which would have expired according to this statement in the Economist next month;  and in order to prevent the restoration of that law, authorizing free coinage in behalf of individuals from interfering with their obligations as members of the Latin union, this bill was introduced in the French senate as stated by this correspondent in the paper of the 19th of January;  and it is no doubt the same law which the Senator's telegram announces the passage of, and is confined, and so stated, to the prohibition of the coinage of silver five-franc pieces for private individuals.

Mr. Eaton.  Mr. President, if it be in order, I desire to offer an amendment to the bill before I proceed to its discussion.

The Vice-President.  The amendment will be received.

Mr. Eaton.  I gave notice many days since that I would at a proper time offer an amendment regulating the value of the coin contemplated by the bill;  and consequently, following what I regard as my constitutional duty, equalizing its value with other well-known coins of the country, I the more desire to offer the amendment and the more desire its adoption, because while with my honorable friend from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] I will vote for the amendment of the honorable Senator from Iowa [Mr. Allison] looking toward an international meeting on the silver question, I will not as, if I understand him, he does, await the action of any such congress.  Under the Constitution of the United States it becomes my duty when I consent to a new coinage to "regulate the value" of that coinage. I have no great confidence that such a meeting or congress, however wise may be its members, can equalize the values of metals. Commerce and the judgment of the world through its acknowledged financial agents, can only determine the relative value of gold and silver.  Therefore, as I best can with the lights before me, I propose to now do it by the amendment which I shall have the honor to offer.

To-day 454½ grains of standard silver equalize in value the gold unit of the United States of one dollar. Undoubtedly giving the Government stamp to silver will appreciate its value somewhat.  The trade-dollar of 420 grains sells in the market now from ninety-five to ninety-seven cents.  I would make coin which shall be worth one hundred cents.  Under my constitutional oath I would do it now.  I would not wait for the action of a congress of nations, from which I expect but little.  Great Britain now has in circulation $100,000,000 in silver.  That silver performs its duty forty times a year by the estimate of the shrewdest business men of Great Britain.  Therefore the volume of business on that $100,000,000 of silver is $4,000,000,000.  In my judgment Great Britain establishes the value of her own coin regardless of the opinion of a congress for that purpose.  Sir, for our own purposes now, I would so regulate this coin that it should be worth one hundred cents in gold, and under my oath --I answer for myself alone-- can vote for no other coin.  It is a part of my duty when I make a coin to regulate its value. Believing that the Government stamp will appreciate the value of the bullion, I would have it contain 440 grains, allowing therefor 14 grains for appreciation;  and I move, if I am in order, to strike out the words "412½ grains" or any other figures that may be in the bill, and insert in lieu thereof "440 grains."

The Vice-President. The amendment will be noted.

Mr. Eaton.  Mr. President, the bill now before the Senate as proposed to be amended by the Committee on Finance of this body is, in my judgment, defective, faulty, and should not receive the assent of the Federal Legislature. The advocates of the remonetization of "the silver dollar of the fathers," as it is fondly called, assign just two reasons in behalf of their claim for favorable action at the hands of the Senate, namely:  First. That there should be a bimetallic standard;  that both gold and silver should be regarded as equal factors in all the business relations of the Government and people of the United States. Second.  That silver being a large and unquestionably valuable production of the United States, it should receive the stamp of Government authority, and by such act the Government would greatly relieve the pecuniary distress which now undeniably envelopes the people of all the States of the Union.

Now, sir, are these claims true ?  First, is the assertion that there can be a double standard of value, two units, sustained by the commercial experience of the civilized world ?  In the course of my remarks I shall address myself to this question and solicit the attention of those Senators who do me the honor to listen to me.  Second, is there any foundation, in fact, for the claim that the additional coinage of that almost mythical token, "the loved dollar of the fathers," to the full capacity of the mints of the country, four millions per month, would in the least degree tend to remedy the evils under which the people of the States now suffer ?

An intelligent discussion of these two claims demands, in my judgment, a full investigation into the financial condition of the country, the causes which have produced the present lamentable situation in the monetary affairs of the people of the country, and what course of legislation is necessary to remedy the same.

Mr. President, catch terms "dollar of the daddies," violent adjectives can have no weight in a discussion of this character.  We are here the representatives of the States, to take care of the interests of the people of the States in their federative and individual capacity.  That legislation which sustains and maintains the high honor of the United States, and such only, will receive the intelligent assent of the people of every section of this country. Such financial legislation as will satisfy the educated and intelligent minds of Kentucky, Georgia, and Ohio (and by this term I mean the thoughtful, well-considered opinion of the people of those States) will satisfy the educated opinion of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York;  and for this simple reason, that such legislation as protects the financial rights and interests of New York and New England will necessarily protect the rights and interests of the people of every other section of this country.

But, sir, high over all and above all, the intelligent, thinking, reflecting people of the United States demand the maintenance of public faith, the upholding of the Federal honor;  and that man, that statesman, will terribly fail who permits the clamor of unthinking demagogues and unreflecting partisans to form his rule of action in dealing with the vast and imperious question of public faith.

Mr. President, in proceeding to the discussion of the important question of regulating the finances of this country, I beg to be understood by the Senate and by the country that in no sense do I stand as a partisan, and I shall not advance for the consideration of the Senate and the country any principles partisan or political in their character.  Therefore, I may well say that this problem of the currency, this question of the finances of a great country, should never be forced into the arena of politics to become a foot-ball to be kicked about at the mercy of partisans and demagogues.  It is based upon the science of political economy, having for its guide the wide commercial experience of all peoples engaged in the production and exchange of commodities necessary to the existence and luxuries of mankind.  And there ought not to be among intelligent minds any difference of opinion as to what should be established as the foundation upon which to erect the extended operations of the commerce of the world.  I venture to say that I shall not be contradicted by any man of intelligence and character when I assert that nowhere else in the civilized world, if the United States is to be made the exception, is there to-day any doubt upon the subject.  Propound the question to the statesmen and financiers of Great Britain, of France, of Germany, of Holland, "What shall be the basis of your commercial operations, the pivot upon which move and turn all of your varied and manifold industries ?"  The uniform answer from all those countries will be "It is not an open question;  it has been settled by the experience of a hundred years;  and the man and the financier who would seek to disturb what is so thoroughly established would be regarded as a lunatic or a fool.  There can be but one basis, the precious metals."  Such would be their answer.

Again, hard money, gold and silver, is the currency of the Constitution of the United States. I find no power in that instrument --I speak with great deference before the honorable Senator from Illinois, [Mr. Davis]-- which authorizes Congress to issue either redeemable or irredeemable "promises to pay."  That body, by the terms of the organic law, can, and that only, "coin money and regulate the value thereof."  I am aware that, under the pressure of our terrible civil conflict, the Administration then in the control of the Government thought it to be necessary to issue several hundred millions of paper promises to pay, legal-tender notes, so called, and declared that these bits of paper should be good to discharge any or all the indebtedness then existing between the citizens of the United States. Sir, so pertinent and proper are the words of another upon this point that I quote from the pen of a distinguished citizen of New York:

At an early stage in our civil war the majority in Congress, then occupying the place and function of the supreme legislative power in the country, assumed for themselves "the divine right of governing wrong," not only in the face of a sound political science but in the face of those immutable moral laws not one jot or tittle of which, as the great Teacher of Galilee has told us, shall fail among men, even though the heaven and the earth may pass away. In declaring printed bits of paper, in themselves intrinsically worthless, a legal tender for debts between man and man, they offended against truth by offering "the unclean incense of a lie" in the high places of the land. By making these bits of worthless paper a legal tender for debts contracted before the possibility of such fraudulent device had ever entered the thoughts of men among us, they sinned equally and at once against reason, justice, and the Constitution. Against reason, for the very monstrosity of the measure has made it exceptional among the nations of the world;  against justice, for by it honest debts were partially repudiated;  against the letter of the Constitution which forbids ex post facto laws, and which in giving to Congress the power "to coin money and regulate the value thereof" plainly pointed to the precious metals alone. The iniquity of this measure was clearly seen and frankly acknowledged at the time of its enactment. The apology offered for it was that considerations of reason, justice, and law must be postponed to considerations of an immediate expediency.

Mr. President, I unhesitatingly assert that for the eighty years following the adoption of the Constitution no eminent public man, no jurist can be named who claimed any such power as that which has been asserted by the present Supreme Court of the United States. While as citizens of the United States we yield to the decision of the present Supreme Court and admit that for the time it has the full force of the pronounced law, so manifestly erroneous, however, is the action of that tribunal that no intelligent man will surrender to it his constitutional convictions, and I shall not, in the position with which Connecticut has honored me, govern my action by an opinion which in my deliberate judgment is so obnoxious to reason, to justice, and to the Constitution.

Mr. President, while I deny the constitutional power of Congress to issue "paper money," I recognize the fact, and I do not propose to wage useless and foolish war against the former action of Congress. Quixotic opposition to the system of paper forced on the country by the late terrible civil war would be foolish as the campaign of Cervantes's knight against the windmills. They are here;  the law is on the book;  the paper is issued;  it is in the form of legal-tender notes;  it is in the form of national-bank notes. It is a fixed fact, and we must deal with that fact. And, sir, assuming the whole burden laid upon the industries of the people, wise, prudent, and sagacious statesmanship would seek to relieve them so far as legislative action can have that effect.

In 1860 the public debt of the United States, of all the States, of all the municipal bodies of the several States, of all the railroad and other corporate bodies, was considerably less than one thousand million dollars.  To-day the indebtedness of the above-named communities and corporations is estimated, and probably underestimated, at six thousand million dollars.  I presume it is seven, but for the purposes of my argument I call it six thousand million.  Thus we perceive that by the actual results of the late conflict and the mode adopted to prosecute it to a successful conclusion, five thousand million dollars was added to the debt of the people of the country in their above-named capacities.  The people are annually taxed to pay the expenses of the Federal Government alone the sum of $300,000,000, one hundred million of which is required for interest on the Federal debt, and it should not be forgotten, Senators, thtat a portion of this taxation, and properly, because they are a portion of the country, falls upon the people of the Southern States, who by the waste of war suffered to an extent perhaps greater in a pecuniary sense than ever before was inflicted upon a people.  The absolute waste of war in the destruction of southern property can hardly be estimated, but I have never heard a well-informed man place the figures at less than four thousand million dollars.

Has the financial legislation of the country been prudent and wise, taking into consideration the condition of the material interests of the people, North and South ?  I aver that it has not.  It has been eminently unwise.  It has permitted and urged a spirit of inflation which is ruinous and dangerous to the common welfare of the people of the whole country, East and West, North and South.  Sir, when retrenchment ought to have been demanded and insisted upon by Federal legislation, new projects were started, new public works undertaken, new offices created and therefore new burdens added to an already overtaxed people.  Following the unwise lead of Federal legislation, the States, the municipalities in the States, its creatures, corporate bodies, were equally unwise.  Sir, the inevitable result was a crash.  It has come;  it is upon us.  Inflated values in railroad stocks, in nearly all securities, in the savings and trust societies, in the manufacturing establishments of the East, in the landed property of the West, have got to, or are rapidly going, to use a common expression, to "hard pan," and the quicker we get there the better.  The quicker we strike "hard pan," to use that expression, the better for the people of the country and its institutions.  It was a necessity of the unwisdom of past financial legislation, and this "inevitable" must be met as it best may be.  I hope, pray, and trust that the wise statesmen and financiers of the United States will meet this emergency as the statesmen and financiers of France met the terrible situation into which that country was hurled by her late Germanic conflict.

Sir, France passed through one of the most disastrous wars known in history.  Her monarch a prisoner, her armies defeated and captured, her strongholds in the hands of her enemies as pledges, and two of her richest provinces torn from her bosom by the iron grasp of the German, compelled to pay five thousand million francs as a war indemnity, what course was pursued by the men in charge of the material interests of France ?  Mr. President, let the Senate understand, let them remember ---they do understand--- no more assignats, no unredeemable promises to pay, no inflation;  but with their eyes steadfastly fixed on the money of the world, the wise men of France faced the inevitable, and in less than four short years the paper of the Bank of France was redeemed in gold on the demand of the holder.  Let the statesmen of the United States heed the lesson and no longer lag by the wayside involved in the meshes of pernicious financial legislation.

Having as briefly as possible called the attention of the Senate to the cause and the amount of the indebtedness of the country, I now propose to offer as succinctly as may be my opinion to whether there is now in the possession of the people of the United States, or subject to their order, whenever value received in labor, merchandise, or the products of the Earth is offered therefor, a sufficiency of coin and currency for the transaction of all the business of the United States.  That I may make myself intelligible to the Senate and the country and base myself on a foundation of what I believe to be true and sound common sense, I shall submit to the country statements as to the business of Great Britain and of the United States and also a comparison of the business of the United States from 1856 to 1860 and 1876 and 1877, and the amount of coin and currency used in the transaction thereof respectively.

But first a word to my honorable friend, the Senator from Kentucky, [Mr. Beck.]  In a speech delivered in this body on the 10th of January, the honorable Senator from Kentucky said:

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 taking in that direction, whether I like all its provisions or not.  But I must hurry on.

Mr. President, has not the Senator from Kentucky already hurried himself beyond the hope of any redemption from his financial purgatory by any aid that he might receive from the "sliver dollar of the fathers" or the "mint-drops" of Benton and Jackson ?  What he uttered is undeniably true;  no just man, no truthful man, will deny it:  Gentlemen say there is plenty of money in the country. Of course there is. Perhaps before the close of the debate the honorable Senator from Kentucky will be kind enough to inform us in what particular the coining of silver dollars will afford relief to a people now confessedly in distress, who are, as he says, afraid to borrow money of their neighbors who have plenty to lend on the security of the twenty-thousand-dollar farm. Does the owner of this twenty-thousand-dollar farm expect to borrow the silver money which his neighbor will hold in exchange for the paper which he now holds and give security on his farm ?  Would he not lose the title to his real estate as readily and as quickly if he mortgaged it for silver as for paper ?  And perhaps the honorable Senator will also have the kindness to inform the Senate and the country how the people are to get possession of the loved ninety-cent "dollar of the fathers," even were the capacities of the mints of the country so increased that $100,000,000 could be coined in a month, unless by giving therefor to the Treasury of the United States either gold coin, legal-tender notes, or notes of the national banks, so called.  I pause for a reply.

Mr. Beck.  Mr. President, I think I can answer the Senator;  at least I can give him my view of it.  I stated in that speech, and I repeat, that there is plenty of money in the country---

Mr. Eaton.  If the Senator will pardon me, I do not want to hear all about that.  What I suggested was that I would pause for a reply to a certain question, and I will state it again.  I do not want a speech interjected into mine about anything else except what I ask for.  If the gentleman will attend to that point, I shall be glad to hear him but otherwise not.  I will repeat my question.  Perhaps the honorable Senator will also have the kindness to inform the Senate and the country how the people are to get possession of the loved ninety-cent "dollar of the fathers," even were the capacities of the mints of the United States so increased that $100,000,000 could be coined in a month, unless by giving therefor to the Treasury of the United States either gold coin, legal-tender notes, notes of the national banks, so called ?  I pause for a reply to that.

Mr. Beck.  Mr. President, I must be allowed to answer in my own way---

Mr. Eaton.  Not by me. [Laughter.]

Mr. Beck.  I must answer---

Mr. Eaton.  No;  I beg your pardon.  If the gentleman chooses to reply to that question he is at liberty to do it;  but he is not at liberty with my permission, to go back and repeat his speech.  He can take another day for that, and I shall be delighted to hear him.  It will be all he will want to do in a day. [Laughter.]

Mr. Beck.  I do not propose to answer in the way dictated by the Senator from Connecticut.  I am obliged to answer in my own way or not to answer at all.

Mr. Eaton.  Very well.

Mr. Beck.  Now my answer is this;  I am ready to give it, and I will give it clearly and distinctly to that proposition:  that the industries of the country have been so depressed by the forced resumption act and by appreciating the price of gold and depreciating the price of property, and the continued fall of everything that a man touches except the bondholder, that no business can be conducted and no man can go into business and make anything.  That is growing out of the distress of the country.  If, however, that appreciation of gold is stopped and the business of the country is allowed to revive, then the silver money will be obtained from the Treasury by men who are engaged in those industries;  it cannot be obtained otherwise.

Mr. Eaton.  If that is an answer and the gentleman is satisfied with it, I hope his constituents will be. [Laughter.]  Mine would not be.  But, Mr. President, in this little admission of the honorable Senator from Kentucky lies the whole marrow and pith of the great question now under consideration by this Senate ---the whole of it:

Gentlemen say there is plenty of money in the country.  Of course there is.

Ah, is it so ?  If it be true ---and it ie true;  the honorable Senator from Kentucky avers it to be true and I will so establish the fact that there shall be no doubter, no carper ---I ask, in the name of common sense which I trust has not entirely departed from among us, in the name of common honesty which I believe yet governs in the affairs and minds of my fellow-countrymen, what effect would the repeal of the coinage law have in operating to the relief of the community which now has over two hundred million more dollars than it either can or dare use ?  That is the point.  I will not object to the repeal of the coinage law;  I recognize silver as one of the constitutional metals from which Congress may "coin money and regulate the value thereof."  Ay, Mr. President, "regulate the value thereof," and by and by I will make further suggestions as to this clause in the Constitution.

I said that I would prove or endeavor to prove beyond a doubt that there was money enough in the country to carry on the business of the country.  Should I be able to do so, then the addition of silver coin, supposing the capacity of the mints of the United States to be four millions per month, in two years might result in our having one hundred million silver dollars in circulation among the people.  That to me would be a subject of rejoicing because it cannot be placed in circulation at all except by the withdrawal or forcing out of circulation of $100,000,000 of "paper promises to pay," issued in my judgment in violation of the Constitution, and for the plain reason that on the 1st day of January, 1878, there was coin in circulation and awaiting ciroulatlon, greenbacks and national-bank notes in circulation and awaiting circulation, greatly in excess of the requirements of the people of the United States.

Now, Mr. President, I proceed to show what was the amount of coin and the amount of currency in circulation and awaiting circulation on the 1st day of January, 1878:

Legal-tender notes .............. $349,943,776.00
Fractional currency .............. 17,764,108.90
Silver coin ..................... 38,056,820.22
Gold coin, (estimated) ........... 40,000,000.00
National-bank notes .............. 321,672,505.00
Making in all .................... 767,437,210.12

More than $767,000,000 with which to transact the business of the people of the United States !  At the present rate of gold there would be on a gold basis ---and I desire the Senate to notice it--- more than $750,000,000 of purchasing power.  Ah! indeed, sir, well may my honorable friend from Kentucky say "there is money enough."

But, sir, this does not by any means state the case particularly enough.  I have said that there are in the hands of the people of the United States for the transaction of their business gold and silver coin, legal-tender notes, fractional currency, and notes of national banks of the puchasing power of more than $750,000,000 in gold.  But more than 92 per cent. of the business of the people of the United States is transacted without the payment of one dollar either in coin or currency, whether a ninety-cent dollar or a hundred-cent dollar. Therefore, in truth and in fact, for the transaction of barely 8 per cent. ---mark it, Senators--- for the transaction of barely 8 per cent. of the business of the people of the United States, there is in hand the vast amount of purchasing power of more than $750,000,000 in gold.  More than 92 per cent. of the business of the country is performed by the use of bills of credit and the various media of exchange without the intervention of one dollar in coin or currency, as I have observed.

There are in the savings-banks of New Jersey, New York, and New England, eight States, to-day, this day, more than $125,000,000 in legal-tender notes and national-bank notes, lying absolutely idle ---absolutely idle, seeking employment.  To-day, sir, in the city of New York alone, outside of her savings institutions, $50,000,000 are idle in the market;  in Boston, $20,000,000;  in the State of Connecticut more than $30,000,000.  I do not speak of Providence, Rhode Island, one of the great money centers of the country, nor of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, or Massachusetts.  Verily there is money enough.

A Bank of England note in any and all capital cities and commercial centers of the continent of Europe commands a premium in the gold of that capital or that country.  Every man knows it who has been in Europe;  every man knows it who reads with regard to these matters.  And why ?  Why is this true ?  Because, for more than sixty years her statesmen and financiers have unfalteringly and unflinchingly maintained the financial theory which the experience of two hundred years determined to be true, to wit, that the precious metals constitute the only safe basis for the currency of a people, and gold is the chiefest thereof.  On this subject in Great Britain there is scarcely a diversity of opinion among her statesmen, her financiers, her manufacturers, her bankers, and her merchants.  She has for sixty years held fast to the faith and has proved it to be true.  Gold, and gold only, is the standard of the world.  The single standard of gold for more than sixty years has controlled the financial theory of Great Britain, and through her has formed the commercial basis of the whole world.  Talk about a double standard !  The magnitude of the commercial, manufacturing, and financial operations of Great Britain seems almost incredible.  I hardly dare state it on this floor:  but it is more than 100,000,000,000 every year.  There is not gold and silver enough in the whole world, coined and uncomed, in bars and coin, to transact the business of Great Britain twenty days.  Think of it for one moment !  It is the credit of that wonderful people, based as it is upon her single standard of gold, that gives her the supremacy among all the nations of the earth.

With a commerce larger than all the rest of Europe combined, a shipping interest in numbers and tonnage nearly half of all employed by the civilized nations of Earth, with a business exceeding that of the United States in the proportion of more than 4 to 1, yet, Mr. President, all the transactions of this wonderful people, all their ramified business, all their money exchanges, which control the money markets of the world, are to-day, this very day, performed on a coin basis of $480,000,000 and a paper issue of $227,280,175, a little over $700,000,000.  Seven hundred and seven million dollars control and govern the world, and yet in the face of this great fact, which to the mind of the political economist and the business man alike ought to be conclusive of the question, honorable Senators urge an increase in the circulating medium of the United States with great earnestness and doubtless from the purest motives.  Sure I am, sir, that my honorable friends will not deem it offensive when I say that they in their very earnestness, in their very great desire to improve the condition of the people whom they represent, ignore and trample under foot those common-sense principles of finance which absolutely control the commerce of the world.

It is proper to state in this connection that it is estimated, and I presume with entire correctness, that 95 per cent. of the transactions of Great Britain are performed by means of bills of exchange, checks, and drafts, and but 92 per cent. of the business of the United States is so transacted, as I have already stated;  also that the territory of the British Islands in comparison with the United States is small;  consequently her population is more compact, and, therefore, less actual money is needed in the daily business of her people than is required by the people of the United States.  Undoubtedly that is true, so far as one-half of our people are concerned, but not to a greater extent than half;  and it will be remembered that the volume of her business is four times greater than that of the United States.  Now, sir, can any reflecting mind believe, with these facts before him, that the Senator from Kentucky erred in the slightest degree when be said there is money enough in the country for the needs of the people of the country ?

Mr. Beck.  I did not state it that strongly.  I did not say "enough for the needs of the people of the country."

Mr. Eaton.  I did not pretend to quote exactly;  but I can quote exactly.  My friend said this ---I read from his speech:

Gentlemen say there is plenty of money in the country.  Of conrse there is.

Well, of course if there is, there is plenty of money, there is enough for the needs of the people of the country.

Mr. Beck.  Now, .Mr. President, I hope the gentleman will not try to misquote me.

Mr. Eaton.  I certainly will not.

Mr. Beck. I said there was plenty of idle money, because the more idle people there are the more idle money there is;  and it is because people are not allowed to work and are starving and begging, instead of making money, that money is bing idle, because no man dare borrow it, because no man can make any money out of it when he does borrow it.  That is what I said, and I have a telegram here from New York, in the papers of this morning, about ten lines long, showing it to-day.  I will read it:

New York, February 4.

If aid does not come soon to the starving poor of Hoboken, many will perish of starvation.  There are five hundred and ninety-six destitute families, with a total of two thousand six hundred and eighty-two souls, entirely dependent upon charity for support.  Poormaster Lewis says he knows of forty familles in the Third ward, only two heads of which have employment, and that for only three days a week at eighty-five cents per day.

Mr. Eaton.  Enough of that.

Mr. Beck.  If these people could work, there would be no idle money.

Mr. Eaton.  How many silver dollars at ninety cents to the one hundred would it take to relieve those people when they cannot get any of them ?  That is a conundrum the gentleman can answer if he pleases.

Mr. Beck.  It is a conundrum, but I will not interrupt the Senator.  I will wait until he is through, and then I will explain.

Mr. Eaton. I now desire to show the Senate and the country by a comparison with ourselves that this cry of more coin, more currency, is a crime against the people and not in the interest of good order or good government. I assert, and I defy contradiction here or elsewhere, that on the 1st day of January, 1878, there were more than $300,000,000 of coin and currency afloat in the hands of the people and awaiting employment at their hands in excess --mark the expression-- in excess of the amount so in hand and awaiting circulation on the 1st day of any January in any year before the great civil conflict.

Has there been any increase of business to warrant it ?  The amount of circulating medium, gold, silver, and bank-notes, for ten years previous to the war varied from $250,000,000 to $475,000,000. It never for any year exceeded the last-mentioned amount. On this amount of coin and paper the entire business of the country was transacted with the greatest ease. And let it be remembered by Senators that the mercantile marine of the United States was greater in the number of ships and I think also in tonnage than that of Great Britain in the year 1860, while now, alas, our flag is virtually driven from the seas, and Great Britain, France, Germany, Holland, and the free cities control the carrying trade of the world. I mention the unpleasant and dishonoring fact simply to show that the $75,000,000 or $100,000,000 then in use and necessary for that industry alone has been diverted to other business. I agree that other important industries have been increased, but not in such immense volume as the shipping interest has decreased.

Thus the Senate will see that the entire business of the country was performed for the ten years before the war on a circulating medium averaging not more than $350,000,000, but a good deal less;  I call it for the purposes of my argument $350,000,000;  while on the 1st day of January, 1878, the amount was more than doubled, more than $760,000,000;  and yet because of a change of values, which follows inflation as certainly as night follows the day, because of commercial and financial troubles that follow a violation of the laws of trade as physical pain follows a violation of the laws of nature, these new doctors of the financial body-politic cry, like the daughter of the horse-leech, "Give, give, more coin, more currency."

Now, Mr. President, unless I am greatly mistaken I have succeeded in showing to the Senate and the country beyond successful contradiction that there is to-day more coin and currency in circulation than the legitimate business demands of the people of this country require. Nor, sir, can there be any doubt of the soundness of that principle of political economy which has been announced by all able writers on the subject, "that whenever and wherever there is a redundancy of the circulating medium for the necessary commercial and financial purposes of a people, inflation will inevitably ensue;  property of all descriptions will be pushed to over-valuation;  costly and unnecessary public and private undertakings will be proceeded with, to use the overplus of said medium;"  after which, as one writer aptly remarks, the "business sirocco will overtake that people."  Sir, the business sirocco has overtaken this people, and the question today is, How can this people be relieved from their own errors ?  If Congress can perform any proper duty, enact any constitutional laws which will effect, or have a tendency that way, an object so necessary and desirable, then and at once should Congress move in that direction.

Honorable Senators say pass this "silver bill" and the people will be relieved in a greater or less degree. No Senator has undertaken to show in what manner the passage of this bill and the coinage in the course of two years of one huudred million silver dollars will effect the desired object. Perhaps from this sweeping assertion my honorable friend, the Senator from Kentucky, should be excepted. Speaking of the law demonetizing "the dollar of the fathers," the honorable Senator from Kentucky says, and I will quote him accurately, for I have pasted on a sheet of paper this part of his speech:

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 all 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.

Mr. President, I confess my profound astonishment at language of this character used by the Senator from Kentucky. Does he mean what he says ?  Does he mean the country to understand that the law leaving the silver dollar out of the coinage "has," as he says, "broken down all the industries of the country and brought upon us the miseries we now see ?"  Is it possible that my honorable friend would make an averment of this character on the floor of the Senate and send it broadcast over the country ?

Mr. President, let us look closely into this horrible act of Congress which so affected all the industries of forty-five millions of people;  let us see what was done under this law, what amount of coinage there was the loss of which worked such dire effects upon a great and stalwart people. Why, sir, from the organization of the Government until 1870, for eighty-two long years that the original coinage law was in full operation, just 4,709,495 silver dollars were turned out of the mint, not enough coin --mark it, Senators, mark it, my New England friends-- not enough coined "dollars of the fathers" in eighty-two years to form the specie basis required by the law of Connecticut for the banks of that little State in 1840 or 1860. A mere statement of the fact is a sufficient answer to this tocsin of alarm which was so loudly sounded by the honorable Senator.

I will not undertake to say how the fact was in Kentucky, but I do not believe in the whole blue-grass region from 1840 to 1870, one single "dollar of the fathers" could have been found unless peradventure a pocket-piece of that peculiar character had been preserved by some beautiful daughter on account of the death of some long-lost friend. Sir, the demonetization of the dollar had no effect upon the condition of the people of the United States in 1873. There were none in circulation. The dollar did not form in any sense, either extensive or limited, the base or the credit of any corporation or of any individual in the United States;  and I challenge denial here or anywhere. There was not a man that ran a pea-nut stand in the United States who based his stand on the silver dollar. There were none. Why, sir, "the dollar of the fathers" had gone into the melting pot of the sons, and it was used in works of adornment, of luxury, and of art;  and I beg to say right here that we have heard enough about this "glorious dollar of the fathers."  Let us now have the dollar of the son that weighs something like one hundred cents in gold.

But, Mr. President, I do not disparage the value of silver as one of the two great money metals of the world.  I was not a member of this body when the law was passed which dropped "the dollar of the fathers" out of the coinage of the United States.  Perhaps I would not have so voted had I been a member of the Senate in 1873.  I incline to the opinion that I should have kept silver in the coinage.  At all events, while I have no idea that the coining of one hundred million or two hundred million silver dollars ---and it requires four years to mint the last-mentioned sum--- would relieve the people from the distress brought upon them by the redundancy of circulating medium during the last dozen years, yet I have no objection to trying the experiment.  The purchasing power of silver is great, and, more, it is well known what that power is when compared with gold, and paper, its representative.

The other day I ventured to ask a question of the honorable Senator from Ohio [Mr. Matthews] when he was engaged in the discussion of his resolution.  That is reproduced by the Senator from Kentucky with an air of triumph as though the answer to my question by the Senator from Ohio contained matter of importance to the consideration of the value of silver.  Let me read from the speech of the Senator from Kentucky:

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.

Sir, the Senator from Ohio did not answer my question, but, like a lawyer and a very good one as he doubtless is, he begged the issue by dodging the question.  The question referred simply to the purchasing power of silver as compared with gold.  The answer of the Senator from Ohio admits in its fullness the claim in my question, and proceeds to state that silver will to-day purchase more of any article of commerce or of the product of human labor than in 1870.  Now, I assert that the purchasing power of silver to-day is not as great in the United States, in France, in Great Britain, or in Germany as the paper currency of those respective countries.  Comparison in currencies is the true criterion by which to arrive at a correct conclusion, and not the assumption of the honorable Senators from Ohio and Kentucky, that silver will to-day, when values are reduced, purchase more of any given product than in 1870.

But, Mr. President, silver is one of the money metals of the world.  Tables have been produced here to show that in China and India it is the standard money of seven hundred and twenty-five millions of people ---more than half the people of the world.  True, those people do not object to silver on account of its weight.  They prefer it to gold, as most other grown men and women would whose labor commanded less than ten cents a day.  Gravely, in the Senate of the United States has an argument sought to be drawn from the fact that seven hundred and twenty-five millions of people prefer silver to gold when the wages of their labor are but five or six or eight cents a day.  They could not have gold.  They do not use much silver.  I have seen their currency.  It is brass with a hole in it, put on a string.  Their standard is silver.  But, sir, the standard of commerce, the standard of the great commercial nations of the earth is gold and gold alone.

Honorable Senators speak of a double standard where the two metals have the same unit of value.  Among such nations are classed Russia, France, and the United States.  Sir, is it true in any proper sense that for fifty years there has been a double standard either in France, or Russia, or the United States ?  The claim is not well founded, and cannot for a moment be sustained before any body of intelligent and deliberative men;  and why ?  Because the great commercial fact is against the claim.  Calling a metal a standard metal does not make it so.  That fact is determined by the force and power of the laws of trade.  You cannot legislate a standard;  it cannot be done;  it is an absurdity to talk about it.  You may call it a standard, but it falls to the earth and is trodden under foot the very moment the true standard of commerce approaches it.  Things had better be looked at as they are, not as we would like to have them.  Silver has been money in Russia, in France, and in the United States ever since the organization of the governments of all those respective countries;  but for the past sixty years it has not risen to a standard in either of those countries.  I am not talking about what the legislation of Russia or France or the United States has been.  I am talking about the great, well-known commercial fact that is known to all sensible men on the footstool of God.  Everybody knows it.  Talk about a double standard in the United States when there was not silver enough in the United States to make pocket-pieces for a respectable charity school !  [Laughter.]  Respectable in size, I mean, because charity schools are always respectable in character.

I have no doubt that silver will always be used as money so far as the United States is concerned.  I hope it will, and no act of mine will prevent it.  It may become the standard money, but it is not now, and, as I before remarked, has not been for fifty years.  By examining the records of the Mint of the United States it will be learned that the amount of gold coinage since 1792 is $983,159,695, nearly one thousand million dollars;  while of the silver of this glorious "dollar of the fathers" up to what is called the day or year of demonetizing it there had been coined just $8,045,838.  A beautiful commentary this fact is upon the claim that silver has been considered a standard alike with gold.

Why, sir, all over Europe, in every commercial nation of that continent for the past fifty years, the gold sovereign of Great Britain has determined the price and controlled the value of every article produced for commercial purposes from the hearth, the loom, the work-shop, the forge, and the spindle.  Honorable Senators may speak of the gold standard as being the standard of kingly governments.  It is the standard of commerce, and however much we may wish that the fact were different, it will not change until we, representatives of the people, so legislate as to place this country where it belongs, in the commercial lead of the commercial nations of the earth.

There are, Mr. President, two classes in the ranks of those demanding the coinage of the "dollar of the fathers" of 421½ grains of standard silver. One class represented on this floor especially by the Senator from Kentucky, insists that it will make cheap money, that it will save to the suffering people of the country 8 or 10 per cent. in all their transactions with each other, and especially in paying the bonded debt of the United States. Another class, championed in the Senate by the honorable Senator from Ohio, [Mr. Thurman] insists with equal power that the coinage and placing in circulation of the aforesaid dollar will at once, as if by magic, equalize the value of the silver and the gold dollar and both will be standards in the eyes of the commercial world.

Now, sir, somebody is wrong here.  Both classes cannot be right;  and both may be wrong, as I have no doubt they are. I confess my astonishment when Senators, in whose opinions on general subjects I have great confidence, boldly and doubtless honestly assert that, by putting a Government stamp of a dollar upon a piece of metal which is worth in the markets of the world but eighty-nine cents, immediately at once in those same markets it becomes of the value of one hundred cents.  Sir, the claim is simply amazing.  It is not true. Sound common sense, every principle of finance and of trade teaches its absurdity and falsehood.  As well might we put the Government stamp upon a pound of pig-iron and claim that it would have in the eyes of commerce in the marts of the world the value of a double eagle of gold !

Nor is it true that values are cheapened.  No, sir;  no, your metal only is cheap.  Whenever it passes from hand to hand in the purchase of commodities or for the payment of labor, some one is swindled;  some citizen is robbed. The bonanza man, the producer and seller of silver bullion, receives a benefit at the expense of the laboring class and the tax-payers of the country;  and should this debased coin --I do not believe it can or will be-- be forced upon the public creditor, then will the fair name of the Federal Government be besmirched and the public faith receive a blow the effects of which will be fatal to our credit in the world's markets, affecting not only the public credit but the credit of corporate bodies and individual citizens.  No more re-funding of the public debt at a lower rate of interest, and thus the saving of millions and tens of millions, yes, hundreds of millions of dollars, which might be saved to an over-taxed people by the acts of the Federal Legislature, is simply rendered impossible. Time will not permit a full examination of this interesting point;  therefore I make my own, for the purposes of my argument, the remarks of John W. Ellis, esq., of New York, an eminent financier of that city, made to the Senate Committee on Finance in November, 1877:

I shall confine my remarks on this occasion to placing before you certain figures and calculations which I have made with respect to the economy of carrying the public debt. Without discussing the question now before the community as to whether the bonds are payable in gold or silver, it will be my aim to show that the strongest considerations of expediency and self-interest, without regard to the honesty or integrity of the matter, require us to continue to pay the interest and principal of the bonds in gold. You will all probably admit without discussion that no person, firm, corporation, or government can afford in any way to depreciate its own credit. The good faith which this Government has already shown in continuing to pay its interest in gold, whether legally so payable or not, has already improved its credit to such an extent as to reduce its annual interest from 6 down to 4 per cent. The debt of Great Britain is carried in the shape of irredeemable "consols" at 3 per cent. These consols have a market value, varying from !JO to 96 per cent., according to circumstances. It may be estimated, therefore, that the highest credit which any government can command enables it to borrow money at about 3½ per cent. There are experienced bankers who believe that the extraordinary development (if the resources of this country which we have witnessed, and which promises to continue if we continue the same course of payments, may reduce the interest of our securities to 3½ per cent., or in theloi_J~ run posstbly to 3 per _cent.. .Th1.s, however. 1t 1s not _necessary to dlS~?USS, an~ I will assume 4 per cent as Its mm1mum power of borrowmg of the Amencan Uruon.   I have made a table showing the amount to be gained provided the Government can continue its funding operations as at present, on the supposition that if tho silver bill is paased and the principal and interest of the bonds are made payable in silver i~ fundinLr operations wil cc!l8e· 1 will now read you the fi~·es: Amount of 6 per cent. bonds outstanding ............ : ... $729,000,000 Annual interest on same ..........................·....·............. $43,740,000 Amount of 5 per cent. bonds outstanding . . . . . . . . · . . · . . . . 708, 000, 000 Annual interest on same.............................................. 35,400,000 Tot'll .............................· .............·.·............. 79, 140, 000 If these bonds were funded at4 per cent. the annual interest would be. 57,480,000 Annual saving ..··.·................ ···························· 21,660,000 If the 4 per cent. bonds shall be paid at their maturity, say thirty years, tbe total saving would be, not compounding interest ..·......·...·.. 649,800,000 ---- If the bonds should not be funded and principal and interest should be paid in silver, and the relative value of gold and silver should con· tinue as at present, say, a difference of 8 per cent., the saving to the GQvernment on the interest payments would be about ....··.....·.. 196, 000, 000 And on the princip~ would be about .....·...................··...... 115, ooo, ooo ---- · Total, not compounding interest························-······· 311, COO, 000 You will see that these figures are very large and extremely suggestive. TJJ,e cumulative power of an interest account is not appreciated by those who are not accustomed to investi~ate it or make up the figures, but wben this interest account comes to uo compounded the result, if placed before you, would furnish you with very startling figures even at the rate of 2 per cent. per annum compoundoo for thirty years. Should our creditors in Europe become dissatisfied, large number of these bonds would be sent home, and while, as is often said, "we should be taking from them a very good thing, ).'et, when tho business of this country is active and capital is needed to carry on Its regular operations, the amount that will have to be diverted from these operations to carry the bonds coming from Europe might. be very em- barrassing to this country; and it is frequently a very good thing for a new and enterprising country to be able to have foreigners supply the capital at so low a rate of interest as 4 rer cent., leaving our own capital free for more active opera· tions.

---[But if we use silver coins and pay off the debt, and borrow no more, the interest rate is reduced to zero, and we need not care how our standing in the money market is.]

Soon after the conclusion of our civil war there were long discussions in Congress as to whether our bonds were payable in greenbacks or gold.  The very discussion of this question beyond a doubt inflicted an injury upon our bonds from which it took us some time to recover.  If that question had never been raised, our funding operations would unquestionably have begun much sooner than they did, and we should have saved a much larger sum of money than we have saved.  I have no doubt, to-day, that if Congress were to declare specifically that our bonds, principal and interest, were and must be payable in gold, not only past but future issues, great gains would result to the country from these funding operations, and important economy result in the management of our finances. in other words, the Government of the United States can no better afford than any corporation or individual in the slightest degree to throw any taint upon its own credit.

I desire that there shall be no mistake here, and therefore I say again that I have no objection to the coinage of a silver dollar; not becanse I believe, even should we use such a term in legislation, that it will become among the commercial nations of the earth an equal standard with gold; not because I believe it will be used to pay either the bonds or the interest on the bonds now or hereafter to become due and payable by the United States; but irrespective of any opinion which I may entertain upon the twu last-mentioned propositions, though not looking for the same degree of benefits to accrue to the industries of the country of which other Senators seem so confident, yet I have no objection to the coinage of a silver dollar. Congress possesses the constitutional power" to coin money, regnlate the value thereof and of foreign coin, and fix the standards of weights and mea.sures;" and under that power Congress may or may not authorize the coinage of the silver dollar. Under that clause of the Constitu- tion, gold, silver, copper, nickel, platinum, one or all or a mixture thereof may be coined and the value of the coin so minted may be regulated by Congress. Of the power I entertain no donbt. That its exercise by Congress is discretionary and not imperative I am equally well convinced. I am not authorized to believe that Congress proposes to drop the metal gold from the coinage of the United States. Gold is certainly the standard of the commercial nations of the civilized world. There- fore Congress will retain gold as one at least of the metals from which a unit of value shall be established. That I regard, then, as a settled fact. Congress will not drop the gold metal from its coin- age or change in any manner the number of grains establishing the gold dollar a unit of value. That it has regulated; that it has determined upon; and thus 25.8 grains of standard gold is the gold unit of value for a dollar. To-day there is no silver dollar. Iu 1873 Jt was dropped from the coinage of the United States, and thereafter there was in fact no such coin known to the country as a silver dollar. It is now proposed that Congress proceed to the exercise of a conceded constitutional power and cause to be coined another unit of value, namely, a silver dollar. Should Congress determine that it will exercise that power, the power of coining, it must first determine , h u1 upon the exercise of another power, namely, 't e reg ating the value thereof," that is, the number of grains of standard silver which such unit of value shall contain. There can be no escape from the proper and legal exercise of the constitutional power conferred upon Congress " to regulate- the value" of the coin which Congress pro- poses to mint. There can be no coining of a silver dollar until a law is passed determining its weight by regulating the value of the bull- ion and determining the number of grains and the standard of the . . . . -silver which such dollar shall contam. The words used m the Con- stitution have a definite technical meaning, and that meaning, as I understand it, must govern me in my course on this important point of legislative action " To regulate the value thereof. What 18 the meanmg o the word "regulate 17 as used in this connection Y D~ it not mean to adjust by some inflexible role, to equalize with some other article, so that tb~·t.wo may be made equivalents in value f For example, soppose there never bad been minted any money except subsidiary coin from the metal known as silver, and in the opinion :md judgment of Congress it became necessary that a dollar shonld be coined; I beg to ask, how would Congress regulate the value of that new coin J

Assuredly Congress would ascertain how many grains of silver of a certain standard fineness would be equivalent to the unit of value called the gold dollar, and that would be constitutional action;  that would be "regulating the value thereof" and making it exactly the equal of another acknowledged unit of value.  This is a new question.  A law is sought to be passed ordering the coining of a new coin, a silver dollar which shall be a legal tender for the payment of any and all debts of every kind and description whatsoever.  Now I beg to ask my honorable friend, the Senator from North Carolina, [Mr. Merrimon] who well knows how deep my regard is for him personally and how highly I estimate his candor and fairness, were this a new question and were he required as he is to regulate the value of this new dollar of silver, would he not immediately ascertain how many grains of silver of the required of a certain standard would be equal in value to the 25.8 grains of gold which form the unit of value the gold dollar ?

Mr. Merrimon.  I am very frank to say that I should experience very great embarrassment about that.  I should first want to know exactly how much monetizing silver would appreciate that coin, and then in the next place how much the increased demand for silver coin by remonetizing it in this country would increase its market value in the world.  That is the difficulty I have had about all this question before the Senate.  I have no desire to see a coined dollar that will drive the gold dollar out of the country, very far from it.  I desire to see gold and silver both circulate and constitute the basis of our paper circulation, for that is all it will accomplish really in the end, so that we may have a paper circulation that will be equal to coin, either gold or silver.  The difficulty with me now is to know exactly what the weight of the silver dollar ought to be.  No one has told me;  no one seems to be able to tell me.  We cannot tell except by a brief experience.  We must first know how much the remonetizing of the silver dollar will appreciate it.  Then in the next place how much will the increased demand by remonetizing silver in this country increase the value of silver bullion in the markets of the world.

Mr. ALLISON. Ma.y I interrupt my friend just there a moment' Mr. MERRIMON. Of course. Mr. ALLISON. Can we not derive some knowledge from the experience of other nations' :France has now in free circulation a large quantity of silver worth 3t per cent. less than the silver dollar we propose here. :Mr. MERRIMON. I was just going to say that before our silver dollar wn.s demonetized it was worth more than the gold dollar. Cir· ctllll8tances have occurred since that perhaps have changed temporarily the market value of silver in the world. One of those circumstances was tho demonetization of silver in this country. Another walil the demonetization of silver in Germany. But if wo remonetize it, how far that will appreciate the bullion value of silver I think is .a very debatable question. I have come to the conclusion, and most conscientiously and after much reflection, that we ought to remonetize our old dollar, and if we tind that it has not the effect to appreciate that dollar to the value of the gold dollar and to appreciate the value of silver bullion in the markets of the world, then after some experience wo must correct our error; and we can only get at it iu that way. What I desire to see is this: a silver coin and a gold coin interchange. able, so that this country with the overwhelming amount of debt that we owe, taking the Federal Government, the State governments, the conn ty governments, the corporations, and the people, may have the benefit of tho widest volume of money to revive our industries, to restore business confidence and prosperity. 1 shall take occasion in a day or two, if I have the opportunity, to express my views pretty fully upon this sn bject. I say this much now in reply to the question of my lriend from Uonnecticnt .. Mr. EATON. I am obliged to my friend. I confess that we are all easily mistaken. I looked in answer for a little statement. However, upon this point I cannot 1)ermit myself to entertain a doubt. Therefore it was that I offered my amendment that this dollar contemplated in the bill now before the Senate should contain 440 grains. I had in my mind the same idea which my friend from North Carolina has suggested, that there was a certain appreciati.ve power in the Government name and stamp, and that I would give the benefit of to silYeJ', If that receives the sanction of the Senate--

Mr. MERRlMON. I understand my friend to admit thepossibilit.y of a double standard.

Mr. Eaton. No, I do not;  there never has been one and never will be one.

Mr. Merrimon. I understood my friend to say that he was not opposed to remonetizing silver.

Mr. EATON. I am not opposed to the making of a silver dollar, but that cannot change my opinion of the fact that there cannot be a double unit of valne. 1 beg most respectfully to differ from Mr. Jefferson or anybody else who entertained an opinion of that charact.elj. Other Seuators may laugh; but I govern myself by my own opinion ; and I do not believe the civilized world has ever seen a double standaru. They have seen what they called double standards, but thoy were not so. One drives the other out. To-day, this very day, ~e hear talk about the double standard of France. There is no gold standard of France. The standard of France to-day is the gold sovereign of Great Britain. Let me tell Senators that if I am in Paris to-day with a hundred-thousand-dollar draft on London, I get tho gold coiu of ranee at a discount. It is not worth a.s much as the gold coin of Great Britain. Mr. ALLISON. Will my friend allow me f Mr. EATON. Most certainly; with the greatest pleasure. Mr. ALLISON. Thatdependssnrely on whetherexchange is in favor of London or in favor of Paris. It is very often in favor of Paris, and is just now in fact or was a. few days ago in favor of Paris, so that a British sovereign would not be worth a.s wuch oo a French napoleon. That is true. Mr. EATON. I did not know that. Mr. ALLISON. It is true. Mr. EATON. Very likely, if my friend says he knows it to be true. It is one of those miracles that have happened once in fifty years, and wEI never happen a,gain.

Mr. President, the people in part represented by me on this floor are largely opposed to the principle of the double standard. They believe as I do that gold is the standard of the commercial world, and that it should be the single standard to govern the vast transactions of this great people. They believe that the original bill is faulty and defective in principle and would not fail to work great mischief to the whole people of this country;  that as it came to this body it was a double fraud upon the industrious men and women of the United States;  that it proposed to rob them of ten cents in every one hundred cents which they earn by their labor and their industry, and not only to defraud them but to secure the avails of the crime to the holders of silver bullion. They do not believe, nor do I, that the dollar was dropped from the coinage of the country by any fraudulent action upon the part of Congress. Had it not been so dropped from the coinage, common honesty would to-day have demanded at our hands that its value should be regulated.

Mr. Cockrell.  Not answered.  Do they pay their debts there in the depreciated silver coinage, in the half dollar containing 193 grains instead of 206 grains, which is by your law a legal-tender in payment of all debts not exceeding $5 ?

Mr. Eaton.  Well, I will answer that question.  If I owed my friend from Missouri $10.50 he would be very lucky if he got a ten-dollar greenback from me and fifty cents of that debased coin, for that would be just the way I should pay him;  but I should not go drumming around to get twenty-one debased half dollars in order to pay him the debt which I owed him ---ten dollars and a half.

Mr. Cockrell.  Will the Senator from Connecticut permit me to read what one of his post-masters says about the currency there ?

Mr. Eaton.  I have no objection.  I am in no particular hurry.

Mr. Cockrell.  He writes as follows:

Cape Vincent, New York, June 14, 1870.

Sir:  Will you have the kindness to inform me on what terms and conditions your Department will redeem the bronze and nickel cents now in circulation ?  In my business here as postmaster they have accumulated on my hands since two or three years.  I cannot exchange them with individuals.  Too many cents are in circulation already.  I am obliged to take them from others in selling postage stamps, but they will not take them from me.  What am I to do unless the Department will redeem them ?  I am willing to pay the express charges.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
Jno. H. Moore.

Hon. George Boutwell, Secretary of the Treasury.

P.S.--- I have also too many bronze two-cent pieces and five-cent nickels.  Will you redeem them also ?

To the same effect is the letter of the firm of Holley & Shelden, of Hudson, New York.  This is dated June 11, 1870.

Mr. Eato.  Have you got anything later ? [Laughter.]

Mr. Cockrell.  I will read this:

We pay several hundred to the Government yearly in licenses, special taxes, and income tax for doing business, still the Government officers will not take a dollar of their own pennies in payment for said taxes.  We cannot even buy postage stamps with them;  the postmaster refuses to sell over one stamp ad receive pennies in payment.  Is there no way by which we can dispose of pennies ?  The country is flooded with all kinds, large and small, making it very unpleasant to do business.  We are obliged to handle hundreds of dollars weekly in pennies, and we find great difficulty in getting rid of them again.  In this section of the country, mechanics are compelled to take two or more dollars weekly in payment for their services, and have to go begging around to the stores to despose of them as the merchants are all overran with them.

And of that depreciated nickel and copper coinage over $12,000,000 have been issued by this Government ---over seven hundred and seventy million separate pieces, and they are now paid to your mechanics and laboring-men all over the country and stamped by the Government with legal-tender power--- the five-cent nickel up to the amount of $1.  That law stands upon your books;  and that is the kind of depreciated currency in which you pay your mechanics and laboringmen.

Mr. Eaton.  Mr. President, I cannot see with what object the honorable Senator from Missouri opened his batteries upon me in that way with regard to a transaction ten years ago nearly.  I beg to say this:  I believe I heard him read it, I have not any doubt upon that subject, but I do not believe that what he read is true.  At all events I am free to say this---

Mr. Cockrell.  That is published by the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Boutwell.

Mr. Eaton.  That does not make it true. [Laughter.]  My friend from West Virginia [Mr. Davis] would insist that that ought not to give any currency to it whatever. [Laughter.]  I care nothing about that.  Was that post-office in my State, sir--- Connecticut ?

Mr. Cockrell.  I said Cape Vincent, New York, and Hudson, New York.

Mr. Eaton.  I beg your pardon.  My friend from New York will take care of that.  That State is altogether too large for my ambition. [Laughter.]  I thought that there could be nothing of that kind in the good old "land of steady habits," the State of Connecticut.  But there is one thing certain I desire to say to my friend from Missouri, and that is that I have learned this, being a great many years other than he, and he being a good scholar will learn it by the time he arrives at my age---

Mr. Cockrell.  I hope I shall learn a great deal.

Mr. Eaton.  And that is, that it takes a great many wrongs to make a right;  that because this Government has issued debased coin it does not follow that it should not stop the issue of debased coin.  Sir, when the workman in the mills of New England, or on the broad prairies of Missouri, or in the cotton-fields and cane of the South, earns with the sweat of his brow a dollar, do not cheat and defraud him by giving him ninety cents, with a poetical assurance that it is a "dollar of the daddies." [Laughter.]

Mr. President, in certain sections of the country demagogues are at work striving to array labor against capital.  It will fail, sir, so certainly as good government remains among men;  so certainly as intelligence maintains its force and power in controlling the actions of man.  What is capital ?  Capital is the accumulation of labor.  Thrift, energy, sagacity, and foresight enable the laborer to accumulate and add to his store.  Good government protects him in his efforts to accumulate.  Good government will also protect his accumulations.  That government which fails to protect the person and property of tbe citizen cannot exist with a free people.  Nowhere, in no country, under any form of government, are the people, the laboring, toiling people, safe in their persons, where property is not also safe and protected.  Such is the history of all peoples.  Here, sir, in this favored land, the persons of all are safe.  The broad mantle of the Constitution is over all.  Thank God, person and property are both protected, first by State and second by Federal power.  I do not permit myself to have any fears as to the future of our country, or our people.  Sir, as one of the people, I have faith in the people.

Agrarianism and communism will never find a foothold in the United States.  Appeals against classes and sections have been heretofore and doubtless will again be made, but confiding as I do in the good sense of the people they pass by me as the "idle wind, which I respect not."  The press informs us that a distinguished citizen of Ohio said the other day, in a epeech delivered in his State, that New Jersey, New York, and New England must be left out in the cold.  Ten millions of people, intelligent, energetic, brave and devoted to the best interests of the people of the whole country, were thus summarily disposed of.  New Jersey, the home of my friend, [Mr. Randolph,] every square mile of its soil sacred by revolutionary memories;  New York, the empire State of the Union, with its five millions of people all devoted to the Constitution of the country, on whose soil was fought the great pivotal battle which made us a people, and Vermont and New Hampshire, proud and great in their memories of Bennington, of Allen and Stark, and Maine and Massachusetts, then the very cradle of freedom, and little Rhode Island, the home of Greene, the second Washington, and of Perry;  and my own brave old Commonwealth, invaded again and again during the days that tried men's souls, but never an enemy slept a night on her soil except the sleep of death ---all these people are to be left out in the cold.

Other Senators will speak for their own States.  I have only to say for Connecticut on her untarnished banner was inscribed two centuries ago in words of living light, Qui transtulit sustinet.  Her sons reverently believe to-day as their fathers did that that Almighty hand which transplanted will sustain.  Sir, the six hundred thousand people of Connecticut calmly await the future action of Ohio.

Mr. President, it was with profound sorrow that I listened to the speech delivered in the Senate a few days since by the honorable Senator from Indiana, [Mr. Voorhees,] whom I do not now see in his seat, which I regret.  I do not attack or arraign the motives of any honorable Senator on this floor.  No one but He who governs the universe knows the motives which move the heart of man.  But, sir, of the effect, if any, which the principles therein enunciated may be the cause, I most undeniably assume the right to speak.  I do not question the right of the Senator to vote for the coinage of a dollar, so called, which is worth but ninety cents;  but in my judgment the effect of the positions assumed by the honorable Senator will be to array class against class, labor against capital, section against section.  I do not say this is the design of the honorable Senator, but such of necessity in my judgment is the effect of his speech.  Let me read what he says:

Associations of capitalists, engaged in obtaining mortgages at 12 per cent. interest on western farms, on account of the scarcity of money in that section, are not only striving to make all such mortgages payable in gold a year hence, but they are threatening those in pecuniary distress that they shall have no further favors at the same rates unless they agree in advance to pay gold in return for greenback loans.  The power of money in the midst of times like these is very great, but I am much deceived in the people if they have not turned at last in defiance and bold warning upon their oppressors.

What other effect can language like this have upon the debtor class at the West ?  Why did not the honorable Senator have the frankness to say where, in what section, the creditor class resided ?  Sir, the creditor class, that terrible fellow the capitalist, resides at the East, in New Jersey;  perhaps in New York;  it may be in New England;  perchance in Connecticut.  Is not the effect of language of this character to array the debtor and the creditor class, the East and the West, against each other ---class against class and section against section ?

The Senator says "The people have turned at last upon their oppressors."  Sir when western gentlemen, in order to build up the industries of their section, to add to their wealth and the value of their lands, approached the capitalist of the East for his needed supplies, nothing was said about oppression, no flings at the sordid hoarder of money.  No, sir;  no.  One person or one thousand persons desired money, individuals and corporations East had it to loan.  Fair trades were made.  All parties were then satisfied, and I undertake to say that they are satisfied to-day.  The Senator speaks of 12 per cent. interest, and that the capitalist threatens to foreclose unless that is paid in gold, and no more favors even at that high rate will be granted except payment be made in gold.  Money has doubtless been loaned at that rate, but I happen to know where the East has loaned the West, not only millions and tens of millions and fifteens of millions, but hundreds of millions of dollars, at a much lower figure.  I do not accuse the Senator with misrepresenting the facts so far as he knows them;  but he is not in full possession of the facts.  I know whereof I speak when I assert that the associated and individual capital of Connecticut to the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars has been poured into the lap of the West and no payment of the principal has ever been asked and is not desired to-day, either in gold or silver or greenbacks or national-bank notes.  All that is demanded is the interest in any circulating medium.  And that is not all;  some five or six insurance companies located in the city of Hartford, Connecticut, my place of residence, have loaned at the West some sixty millions of dollars at 8, 9, and 10 per cent.  Sir, the number of loans was 11,403.  In some cases, mark Mr. President and Senators, the companies have been forced to take the property upon which loans had been made, because it was not worth the amount loaned upon it.  In other cases, and I desire the Senator from Indiana to make a note of it, these hard capitalists, when the owner of the property thought he could pull through the difficulty by a reduction in the rate of interest, agreed to be paid by the contract between the parties.  Sir, the rate has been reduced.  One fact like this will outweigh the rhetoric of the Senator.  Furtber, sir, three gentlemen appointed by the Governor of the State of Connecticut, men of high character, the chairman Judge Seymour, late chief-justice of the supreme court of Connecticut, a man with no superior in the country as a jurist and gentleman, report all these facts to the Legislature of Connecticut, which report I here hold in my hand, and that committee have advised all these insurance companies in all proper cases to reduce the agreed-upon rate of interest, so that the western debtor may continue in the possession of his property, his homestead, his roof-tree under which is gathered his great treasures, his wife and children.  Ah! Mr. President, these creditors, having thus acted without the advice of these honorable gentlemen, will so continue to act.  Oppressors of the people of the West !  Sir, thus does the plain truth override and overshadow the poetry and sentiment of my honorable friend from Indiana.

Redundancy of the circulating medium, an overweening desire to become speedily wealthy by the use of said redundancy, has overcome the better judgment of the people East and West.  Values have been pushed to a before-unheard-of point and consequently great suffering ensues.  The penalty is now being paid for the commission of financial crime, and let it be met as brave men should meet misfortunes.  Harsh and bitter language is not only useless, but it does marked injustice to the eastern capitalist, breeds bad blood between the two classes, and does not cement friendship between the sections, which in my judgment is so very desirable.  Menace or threat does not become the Senate Chamber of the United States, and while the honorable Senator from Indiana disavows in advance the use of menace, he says:

Sir, I have no word of menace to utter on this floor, but, in behalf of every laborer and every owner of the soil whom I represent, I warn all such as value their investments that when these doctrines of despotism are sought to be enforced this fair land will again be convulsed in agony and the fires of liberty will blaze forth again, as they did a hundred years ago, in defense of the natural rights of man.

Again I must be permitted to say that the honorable Senator is unfortunate in the use of his vocabulary.  A plain man like I am, unused to rhetoric, would, but for the disavowal, be of the opinion that the Senator's constituents, unless the silver dollar of the fathers was immediately authorized by Congress, and the four other points which the Senator demands be at once adopted, would proceed to dishonor their plighted word, repudiate their honest debts, forswear their contracts, and strike for their mortgaged farms, God, liberty, and their native land.  I have no fears of any such terrible consequences.  The North, South, East, and West are bound together by the Constitution of the Union and the glorious memories of the past.  The band of brotherhood will not be broken.  The East will in the future, as in the past, with no niggard hand from its accumulated wealth assist the labor and landed interest of the West.  The honorable Senator from Indiana reads the history of the world far differently from myself.  One of us is profoundly mistaken when speaking of the wishes, desires, and movements of what is called capital.  He speaks of it as arrogant and aggressive in spirit and action.  In my judgment directly the contrary is the truth.  Capital is now, and always has been, and always will be, timid and conservative.  Capital is and must be ever found on the plane of quiet, demanding peace, good order, avoiding everything looking like or verging toward revolutionary or reactive measures.

So long as the great presidential struggle of 1876 dwells in the minds of ourselves or those who come after us, the great fact will be admitted by all intelligent men that the conservatism of capital, its fear of contention, its desire for quiet, was one of the great elements which conspired to place you, sir, in the chair, the duties of which you perform with great fidelity and to the satisfaction of every member of the Senate.

No, sir, no;  capital is not arrogant, is not aggressive, but submits to wrong, acquiesces in great political mistakes, rather than face the consequences which a determined adherence to right might bring upon its owners and votaries.  Of course it will be understood that I speak of aggregated and associated capital, and not of the purse-proud individual who in his little corner undertakes by the misuse of wealth, very likely ill- gotten and shoddy, to exercise control in the obscure hamlet where he may happen to reside.

Mr. President, I hope I may be permitted as a life-long friend to say one word to my southern friends on this floor. What I say will be said in the best spirit in the world, as you well know. Broken in all your material interests by the terrible waste of war, until recently, by what I am compelled to say was unwise Federal legislation, you were not permitted a voice in your own government. Happily, all that is changed. Of right you now have the power which should ever be exercised by free States. The ravages of war are to be overcome. Your new system of labor has become familiar, and what is now required to build up your great industries is capital. The labor you have. Cotton, tobacco, rice, are your staples and the necessaries of civilization. In the bosom of your soil teem coal and iron. The water-power of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia is unrivaled in the country. With capital and skilled labor the waste places in your noble States would be builded up and the wilderness would bud and blossom as the rose. Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and New England have the capital and the skilled labor. Be it our duty so to legislate that each section of the country will perform its full share in repairing the disasters which have overtaken us all.

What is now necessary for the common weal is oonfidence, confluence; not attacks upon capital, not burning rhetoric against the accumulations of the North and East, but that appeal of good brotherhood which will insist in building up what the industries of the whole country demand, sublime confidence in the integrity of the people of the North, East, West, and South. No more threats, no more menace. Threats and menace do not become the people of any section of this broad land. It can have no effect upon the section which I represent, except the effect to scorn the men who use it. Sir, brave men do not fear menace; honorable men will not indulge in that cheap commodity; it is not as valuable as silver bullion. Let us have no more of it. Pass your debased silver bill, if it so please you; but no more threats; they merit and receive scorn, and scorn only.

Mr. President, the people of Connecticut are an intelligent, a brave, an industrious and a law-abiding people. They have vast interests dependent upon judicious and correct Federal legislation, and I should be false to them, false to those interests and to the generous confluence bestowed upon me, without regard to party lines, by the people of my State; I should be false to my own honor, if I failed to denounce in fitting terms every congressional attempt to attack their rights, their interests, and their integrity. The bondholders, as they are flippantly called, of Connecticut are the hard working men and women of the State.

There are on deposit in the savings-banks of that old Commonwealth $80,000,000, sixty millions of which is the property of the toiling people of the State. They are the bondholders of ConnecUcut in a large degree. Fourteen million dolbrs aro held in bonds by the savings-banks of Connecticut alone. They demand at my bands that . I should defend their integrity and honor. The accumulated capital of the State of Connecticut. the results of toil, personal labor, and unflagging industry reaches beyond question to a very large amount. It has been used with a free baud to build up the interests of other sections of our common country. As it baa been in the past so I trust it may be in the future; bnt, sir, that end cannot and will not be accomplished by false and pernicious Federallegi.slation, or by wicked and slanderous denunciation in the high places of the land. Let there be peace; the war between sections is over; every State of the Union has its fnll representation on the floor of Congress. The war is over, but the immense debt in a gr.eat degree consequent thereon, ha-ngs over us like a funeral palL For many a year yet the tax-gatherer must be met, and his demands must be liquidated. Then, sir, like a band of brothers let us encounter the great ills that surrouml us. Let us have faith in each other, in the common honesty which has been the commercial glory of the American name. Confidence, faith, honesty I A holy trinity which will redeem us from the financial sins of tile past. I will not at this time, and on this bill speak of the legal-tender notes, or of the notes of the so-called national banks. Properly a discussion of their future will arise upon the question of a repeal of the bill known as the -resumption act. Had I been a member of this body at the time of the passage of that bill I would not have given it the sanction ofmy"ote. In my judgment the time had not then arrived to announce when the payment of specie would be resumed. There was nothing in the financial horizon of 1875 to warrant Congress in saying that specie payments should be resumed in 187ft. What my action shall be on the question of repeal is quite another matter, and upon that I will be heard whenever the measure comes before the Senate. Within the last ten days paper has been within lt per cent. of gold. And, in my judgment, but for the unwise action of Congress upon the silver bill, the country, the commercial men of the country would have resumed specie payments before the 1st day of March, 1879, by the operation of those great laws of trade which, instead of legislative enactments, have absolute power over all financial operations. In my judgment the discussions upon this bill, and the bill itself, may have had an unfortunate effect upon the great and desirable matter of a resumption of specie payments. The attempt at false and impolitic legislation by Congress can only bring evil upon the great industrial and commercial classes of the country. The proposition to make a coin of ninety cents' worth of silver into a unit value of one hundred cents can certainly have no other effect than to delay the time when the paper issue would be worth its face value and the commercial honor of the country stand in the eyes of the world sound and unimpeachable. But of that I will not further speak. However we may differ upon the number of grains of standard silver necessary for a unit of a dollar, upon one thing I trust we will not differ: no more unconstitutional currency; no more irredeemable promises to pay, when there is to-day a large superabundance on the market. Mr. President, what can Congress do to assist the people of the country f We can retrench the expenses of the Federal Government. If necessary we can cut down the Army and Navy. Where now two cadets are sent to West Point, and two youths to the Naval Academy, let there be one for each of those institutiond. I am sore that wo should with that curtailment have young men enough for the demands of the Army and Navy. Above all, let the Congress wisely legislate in the open in~ of new avenues of trade and commerce. Let Congrros discriminate m favor of the American shipping interest, and in twelve months that great industry will be placed where it was 'u ltlGO. Change our absurd navigation laws and permit American capital to purchase ships on the Clyde and elsewhere, and give them American registers. So legislate that the capitalists, that much-abused class, the enterprising American merchant, will opeu lines of stea_m comrun1878. CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE. 761 nication from the ports of New Yor~ Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, New Orleans, and Galveston, ancl our Pacific ports, with all the ports of Mexico, Brazil, and the EM~ .

It is a burning shame to our country that we export to Brazil but $7,000,000, while the volume should and may be $75,000,000;  to Mexico but $5,000,000, when it should and ought to be $25,000,000.  We can undersell our great rival England everywhere if we will but exercise the intelligence which of right belongs to the American name.  To-day the cutlery of Connecticut rivals Sheffield and Birmingham at home in their own market.  And shame, shame to us all, England and France ship to Brazil more than half of her breadstuffs, nearly all of the butter and cheese which she consumes, her boots, shoes, hats, and various agricultural implements, light woolens, and cotton cloths, all of which should be furnished by the people of the United States.  Let us bestir ourselves as men should and the trade of Brazil, the great East, the golden Ophir, Mexico, and the islands of the seas will be ours.  Sixty million dollars in gold ---my friend from Kentucky said $100,000,000--- in freights alone will come into the pockets of the American ship-owner which now are given to Great Britain, France, Holland, Germany, and the free cities.

Let Congress do this, sir, and in less than twenty-four months the volume of our exports ---our cotton, tobacco, pork, beef, lard, butter, cheese, and our breadstuffs, with the products of our looms, forges, and workshops, the precious metals, the gold and silver of California, Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona--- will exceed by $200,000,000 the volume of our imports.  And then, Mr. President, the unerring and inevitable laws of political economy, which govern trade and finance as absolutely as the Creator of the universe governs the moral and the physical world, will place gold, silver, and paper alike in value in all our great commercial centers, and the safe and true basis of our financial system will be attained with the full development of the manifold industries of our people.

Mr. Howe.  Mr. President, nothing but the courage which comes of conviction---

Mr. Beck.  Will the Senator from Wisconsin allow me just one moment ?

Mr. Howe.  Let me finish my sentence.

Mr. Beck.  I desire to know if the Senator from Wisconsin will allow me to say a word before he begins ?

Mr. Howe.  I do not know how long a time the Senator wishes to occupy.

Mr. Beck.  Not over two minutes. I wish simply to say that while the Senator from Connecticut put categorical questions to me which he seemed unwilling that I should answer in my own way, and each time sought to prevent me from answering, he had ample time and avowed that he was in no hurry to allow the Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Missouri to interrupt him as long as they pleased. I was not aware of any reason why that discrimination should be made, especially as I had no desire to interrupt him, and only interposed because he put questions to me which I thought I should answer. I now want to say to the Senate and to the Senator from Connecticut that I shall seek a very early opportunity to answer the questions which he was so unwilling to allow me to answer to-day.

Mr. Howe [Timothy Otis Howe (1816-1883); Green Bay Wisconsin, R; studied law; admitted to the bar].  Mr. President, only that courage which is born of conviction would induce me to present my own views immediately succeeding the very able and the very eloquent speech to which the Senate has just listened.  Sir, it is not my purpose to-night to attempt to persuade any one else how to vote.  My object is as briefly as possible to explain my own vote. I do that in the presence of the Senate because your rules require it to be done here;  but my object, I confess in the outset, is to make myself intelligible if I can, rather to a few constituents of my own for whose judgment I have great respect but whose views on the question now before the Senate do not correspond with my own.  From some of those constituents I have heard within a few days.

Mr. President, if the millions comprising the people of the United States has just been scattered over the country, if we had no coinage, no currency, no organized industry, no commerce;  and if we had contracted no debts, public or private, then we should be quite at liberty to adopt such system of finance, such system of currency, to adopt such medium of exchange, to accept such standard of value, whether single or double or quadruple, as we might think best calculated to open up the future before us.  That is not our condition.  We have a coinage and a currency and a commerce and a productive industry, and we have contracted an enormous, almost an incalculable indebtedness.  Therefore it seems to me that the primary condition to all change in our coinage should be that we do not cripple our business energies, that we do not shackle our industry, that we do not fetter our commerce, and nbove all, that we neither appreciate nor depreciate outstanding securities by whomsoever issued.

The only change proposed by the bill before the Senate is to reintroduce into your coinage a dollar to be composed of 412½ grains of standard silver.  To this measure various objections have been and are urged.  It is said that silver is too heavy for money.  Factories, street cars, hotels have been employed as sample-rooms, where the missionaries of the gold interest have exhibited large sums of silver coin in order to create a popular disgust at its weight.  Mathematicians have been employed to transpose your public debt from dollars into tons, and one political economist of a somewhat poetic temperament has suggested that if silver is to be used as money, a wheelbarrow will he found the most convenient porte-monnaie.  It is not to be denied that silver is heavy, but then it should be remembered that the density of silver is no greater than it has been for a great many years, and the world has always used it until recently as money, and so far as I know the latest discoveries have found no people anywhere who employ the wheelbarrow for a porte-monnaie.  I suppose if the sum of our public debt were to be counted out at one time and paid over to one man in silver dollars, it would embarrass him somewhat to put it in his pocket and take it away.  So it would embarrass him if it was paid in gold coin, and it would be just as embarrassing for the debtor to pay in silver as for the creditor to receive it;  it is as difficult for one to handle as for the other.

Mr. President, the simple truth is that your debt never will be paid in gold or silver coin, no matter what your contract may say, no matter what your laws may say.  Your debts never will be discharged in either of these coins, for the simple reason that the coin does not exist with which to pay them.  We dispute about a great many propositions in political economy;  but about this there can be no dispute, that the world does not hold the coin, nor the bullion which can be made into the coin, equal to the payment of the world's indebtedness.  Your debt, sir, must be paid in commodities much heavier than either gold or silver.  Instead of paying in silver at something more than the dollar to the ounce, you must pay largely in wheat at one or two cents to the pound;  you must pay largely in hay at from $5 to $10 per ton;  you must pay in iron;  you must pay in cotton;  you must pay in the heaviest and the bulkiest commodities.  That is the way payment is to be made practically, and I hope those who hold the bonds of the United States will not be made to turn white at the idea that they are to be compelled to lug off the principal of their debts in silver coin.

The question before us is, not what shall be the weight of the commodities in which we pay our debts, but what shall be the standard by which those commodities shall be weighed.

Again, sir, it is objected that to reissue a silver dollar is to reintroduce a double or at least an alternative standard of value.  It seems to me, that consequence is inevitable, and it seems to me that such consequence is to be deprecated;  but mutability in the standard of value seems to be inevitable whether you employ one or both of the so-called precious metals in it.  Before coinage gold and silver both are mere commodities and are valued as such;  when coined into money they do not cease to he commodities although they become something more.  Before coinage they have only an exchangeable value;  when coined they require a tale value also, but they do not thereby lose the other, the commodity value.  The tale value is controlled by statute;  the exchangeable value is regulated by the relation which the volume of the metals bears to the volume of other commodities.  The former is as immutable as the law;  the latter fluctuates with every change in that relation.  As the volume swells values rise;  as the volume shrinks values fall.  At one time the commodity value will control the movement of coin;  at another the tale value.  While the latter dominates coin is anchored to the statute and courses through the channels of trade in the country which stamps it.  But whenever in Siberia or Siam a silver dollar will buy more than a dollar's worth, it straightway assumes the character of a commodity and it goes on the wings of trade to the uttermost parts of the earth and is bartered for whatever promises the most profit.

If we would have a national standard of value which is inflexible, we must construct it of some material which is above or below the influence of international trade and of accidental production.  Nothing is more subject to all these influences than what we call the precious metals.  Every new mine that is opened, every old one exhausted, almost every steamer which sails to a foreign port or arrives from a foreign port, elevates or depresses our standard of value.  A standard of measure marked upon the shoot of a locust all would think objectionable because too changeable, and yet such a standard of measure is far more suitable than a standard of value composed of what you call the precious metals.

The bill before the Senate contemplates the coinage of not less than twenty-four millions of silver annually.  Undoubtedly your standard of value will vibrate under the influence of the measure, but the vibrations will not be more violent than they are now;  in all probability will be less.  If the silver displaces the same amount of gold, then the volume of coin will fluctuate just the same as now.  If it be added to the gold coinage it will swell the volume year by year, but diminish the fluctuations from year to year.  In 1847 our gold coinage was forty millions the next year it was three millions.  In 1850 it was nine millions;  two years later it was sixty-two millions.  In 1860 it was sixty millions;  in 1864 it was twenty-one millions.  If twenty-four millions of silver had been coined each year, the volume would have been swelled just so much each year.  But the vibration from year to year would have been much less extreme.  In the first instance, instead of from twenty millions to three millions, the fluctuation would have been from forty-four to twenty-seven millions;  in the second instance, instead of from nine to sixty-two millions, the fluctuation would have been from thirty-three to eighty-six millions, and in the last case, instead of from sixty to twenty-one millions, it would have been from eighty-four to forty-five millions.

The fixed and determinate sum of silver added yearly to the in definite sum of gold would give to our standard of value one element of stability, whereas now it has not a single element of it.  But so long as we adhere to a standard of value which rises and falls, and sways to and fro with all the vicissitudes of mining, and with every fortune of fickle commerce, it hardly seems worth our while to submit to great sacrifices in order to guard against the influence ot twenty-four millions of coined silver annually.  Again, it is said that---

Every consideration which justifies and requires the use of a precious metal as the basis of business * * * seems also to justify the use of both; * * * provided always that the use is universal, or nearly so;  but that the remonetization of silver by the United States, at this present time, would be followed by such a depreciation in its value as to furnish a rebellion against the adoption of the plan by the rest of the world.

This proposition, more briefly stated, is that the double standard of value is best, but if we adopt the double standard without the consent of other nations we shall depreciate the value of silver and destroy its popularity, and in the end defeat the desirable object of recoining it.

Sir, there are but few propositions which arise upon which political economists are entirely agreed.  On this one, however, they may be said to be very nearly unanimous, to wit, that monetizing a metal may appreciate but cannot depreciate its value.  If the market value of silver bullion be a dollar an ounce, silver coins will be worth a dollar an ounce, although the statute may stamp them a cent each.  The author I quote, who is a dissenting member of the silver commission, is, so far as I know, the only one who impeaches the truth of this proposition.  There are also very few questions, political or economical, upon which Americans are wholly agreed;  but the author just quoted is, I believe, the only one who does not hold that the power "to coin money and regulate the value thereof" is by our Constitution conferred upon the Congress of the United States, and not upon a congress of nations.  If that is so, I submit this Congress had better continue to exercise that power, and not attempt to abdicate it.  If we coin money at all, we had better coin the best, so far as we can ascertain what the best is.  If the bimetallic coinage is the best, as this authority insists, we can afford to adopt it, although some other countries adopt the worst.  Fifty years ago, Great Britain, as an "independent movement," adopted for herself that worst policy of a single standard.  Great Britain still survives.  Encouraged by that precedent, cannot we trust ourselves now, independently and alone if need be, to the best policy ?

Another objection, and the only serious one, is that this is an attempt to depreciate our coinage and to pay our debts at a discount.  This objection fills the mouth of every opponent of the pending bill.  It is urged on every side, earnestly and often offensively.  The pending measure has been stigmatized as "dishonest finance."  Its friends are denounced as "currency quacks."  The bill is said to be "perfidious" to the pledges given in respect to the public debt.  An analysis of society has disclosed the fact that its rascals have combined in support of remonetization, and now exult in view of the fell blow they are about to strike at the public credit, while the pure and upright in heart are gathered into the ranks of the opposition, mourning the decadence of public virtue, and like the Ephesians before the gospel reached them, "having no hope, and without God in the world."

It was recently announced that a western city had been placed on the black-list because at a public meeting held within its limits the coinage of silver dollars was recommended.  And so when some of its citizens tried to borrow money in New York they were told that money could not be trusted in the home of such a heresy.  A metropolitan journal, which has been distinguished for its zeal in the cause of civil-service reform, only a few days since, called upon the President to abandon that great cause;  to snatch from the life of his perishing countrymen that water of life which has been gushing from order No.1;  to forego for the present all effort to ingraft upon the civil service such blossoms of reform as Theodore Roosevelt, and Colonel Fitzsimmons, and Michael J. Waldron;  and for a time to use his post-offices and collectorships in calling the besotted devotees of remonetization to the worship of the one only true metal.  Surely we must be hardened sinners indeed if we can withstand such abundant means of grace.

Taking the place assigned to me, among the rascals, meekly, I nevertheless feel moved to remark that, strictly speaking, the question is not whether we shall keep or break the promises we have made to the public creditor.  In form, at least, the question is rather what is the promise made to the public creditor.  There is a difference of opinion, real or pretended, as to whether we have or have not promised to pay our debt in gold.  It seems to me the more charitable thing to assume, pending the debate, that the difference of opinion is real and not pretended.

Of course we promised to pay gold or we did not.  Only one of the disputed theories can, by any possibility, be correct.  But it is quite possible that both may be honestly believed;  and I repeat that during the discussion I think it more generous, if not more just, to assume that both sides are honest in the opinions they avow.  But I do not at all insist upon this predicate.  If it will be a comfort to any one who opposes the bill to feel sure that whoever is wrong in this great dispute is willfully wrong, I am quite willing to concede it for the sake of the argument.  It makes the debate far more momentous.  The question is then no longer one involving mere money, but one involving morals as well.  The side which loses must forfeit not only gains but character.

If we have actually promised to pay in gold, those of us who propose to pay in a cheaper metal are trying to settle at a discount.  But if, on the contrary, we really promised to pay in coin of a fixed standard, those who would enforce payment at an appreciated standard are endeavoring to collect a premium.  If judgment goes against us, we must consent to wear the brand of repudiators;  but if judgment goes against the other side, they must wear that of marauders.  Undoubtedly, if I refuse to pay you, sir, ten cents which I honestly owe you, I do you a great wrong;  but if you, having more physical strength than I, put your hand into my pocket and take ten cents out which I do not owe you, there are moralists, or there used to be, who would hold even that to be improper.

Before, however, I consent to be assigned to the category of a repudiator, I must be permitted to state what the terms of contract were when our debt was contracted.  Every man, before he purchases a bond, whether issued by the United States or any State, or by any municipality within a State, first looks to see whether the agents issuing the bond have authority of law for issuing such a bond as is offered to the market.  It is therefore not only fair to assume, but impossible not to believe, that every man who holds a bond of the United States knows precisely what the authority was for issuing it.  At the beginning of every month the Secretary of the Treasury publishes a statement of the items constituting the public debt;  and referring to the act which authorizes each item.  Referring to the last statement issued, it will be seen that a little more than $783,000,000 of our bonded debt was authorized by the act of July 14, 1870, as amended by the act of January 20, following.  There is nothing ambiguous in the terms of that act.  Every bond authorized by it is, by words, as apt as could be selected, made payable not in gold but in "coin;"  not in "coin" generally, but in "coin" of the then "standard value."  All the rest of our bonded debt was issued under different acts of dates prior to July 14, 1870.

A dispute had existed upon the question whether some of those earlier bonds were not legally payable in lawful money.  That dispute was settled by the act of March 18, 1869, by which it is declared "that the faith of the United States is solemnly pledged to the payment in coin, or its equivalent, of all obligations of the United States not bearing interest, known as United States notes, and of all the interest-bearing obligations of the United States, except in cases where the law authorizing the issue of any such obligation has expressly provided that the same may be paid in lawful money, or other currency than gold or silver."

Such was the contract between the United States and its creditors as it stood on the 14th of July, 1870.  All bonds issued under the act of that date were payable in coin of the then standard value.  All other bonds were payable in any other coin which the United States might see fit to issue from its mints.  But it is now said, or at least insinuated, that since 1870 a new contract has been substituted and that by the terms of the new contract we have agreed not to pay any silver, but to pay exclusively in gold.  In other words that we have contracted not to pay coin but in something 10 per cent. better than coin.

I do not forget the suggestion that payment in gold now is said to be no better for the creditor than payment in coin in 1870.  I know how industriously it is argued that gold has not advanced but that silver has declined, and that it is the decline of silver, not the advance of gold, which occasions the existing difference between the exchangeable values of the two metals.  At this moment I do not stop to dispute the truth of these assumptions.  I simply ask, has the contract been changed ?  Must the public debt now be paid in gold, and is such payment 10 per cent. better than payment in coin ?  If so, when, where, and how was that change made ?

An alteration so important should not be made in a corner;  it should not be made in the dark;  it should not be the result of indirection, of accident, or of trick.  Two hundred millions should not be taken from the pockets of the people by mere legislative sleight-of-hand.  If the contract has been so changed, we should expect to find the alteration made openly, publicly, and for a good consideration;  above all we should expect it to be made plainly.  It should not be the office of laborious interpretation to deduce an alteration in the contract which makes the burden of it two hundred millions heavier than it was as made.  Where, then, is this disastrous alteration to be found ?

Mr. President, the detective police has been employed for months in pursuit of that amendment;  submarine lawyers have gone down in diving-bells, fathoms deep, into old statutes in search of the new contract;  parliamentary archaeologists have excavated whole mountains of mouldy debates to uncover it;  and yet the whole combined force has failed to discover any such alteration.  Not only have they utterly failed to show us that alteration of the contract, but even those who are most confident it exists are not at all agreed as to where it is to be found.  Some by blasting have thought they uncovered it in the very heart of the "coinage act of 1873;"  others by boring claim to have struck it in a crevice of the Revised Statutes.  Such an amendment ought not to be lodged in either place, and I am glad to say for the credit of our legislation that I do not find it in either of those places;  not the ghost of it.

A great deal has been said of the origin of the coinage act of 1873.  It has been charged to stupidity, to conspiracy, to fraud, as well as to the opposites of those inspirations.  Sir, I have nothing now to say of the parentage of that act;  nut I have this to say of its effect.  It does not, in my judgment, have the least possible effect upon either of the acts under which our bonded debt was contracted.  It does not change a word or a syllable either of the act of March 18, 1869, or of the act of July 14, 1870.  It does not take a word out of those acts.  It does not add a word to either of those acts.  As we have already seen, the former act simply commands that the debt previously contracted shall be paid in coin, while the latter commands that the debt issued in pursuance of it shall be paid not merely in coin, but in coin of the standard value then existing.  Among the coins then existing and recognized by law as an unlimited tender for debt was a dollar containing 412½ grains of standard silver.  It has been said, carelessly no doubt, that such a coin was then obsolete.  That is a mistake.  Those dollars were then annually issued from the Mint.  Over a million were issued in 1872.  Over 900,000 were issued in 1873 before the coinage act took effect.  Now, what is there in the act of 1873 which conflicts at all with either of the acts just referred to ?  It was the sole purpose of those acts to fix the relation between the United States and its creditors.  It was the sole purpose of the act of 1873 to regulate the mints and coinage of the United States.  That act does not refer to the debt, it does not refer to the creditors of the United States.  It does not directly or indirectly allude to either of them.  The fifteenth section does indeed enumerate the silver coins of the United States and does omit from that enumeration the dollar containing 412½ grains, and the seventeenth section does declare that "no coins, either of gold or silver, or minor coinage shall hereafter be issued from the mint other than those of the denominations, standards, and weights herein set forth."  But neither of those sections refer to the debt nor to those holding the debt.  They are commands issued to the directors of the mints.  I think myself the effect of the two sections is to declare that the dollar of 412½ grains shall no longer be coined;  but, as was said a few days since by the Senator from Ohio, neither of those sections affect in any way the character of the silver dollars already issued.  Whatever potency they had when issued they continued to have after the act of 1873 was passed.  They had always been, and they still continued to be, legal tender for any and every debt, whether owned by the United States or by my individual in the United States.  Not only is such the true construction of the sections referred to, but it is the express declaration of the sixty-seventh section of the same act.  That section declares that---

This act shall not be construed to affect any act done, right accrued, or penalty incurred under former acts.

If, therefore, 412½ grains had been made into a silver dollar, that remained a silver dollar.  If the right had theretofore accrued to pay a dollar's indebtedness with such a coin, that right still survived the act of 1873.  If the act of 1873, instead of enumerating the coins thereafter to be issued from the Mint, had merely directed that thereafter no new coin should be issued.  I take it no man, certainly no lawyer, would have insisted that such a provision at all affected the pre-existing obligations of the Government to pay its whole debt in coin, or at all affected the rights of the creditors of the United States to have their whole debt be paid;  and if those rights and those obligations would have survived an express command to the mints not to issue any more coins of any description, certainly the right and the obligation must both survive a mere prohibition to issue one particular coin.

This construction is confirmed by reference to the repealing clause of the act of 1873.  That clause does not repeal in terms any portion of the act of March, 1869, or of July, 1870.  It does not refer directly or indirectly to those acts.  It does not, in terms, repeal all other acts and parts of acts inconsistent with its provisions.  The repealing clause is more restricted than that, and merely repeals "All other acts and parts of acts pertaining to the mints, assay offices, and coinage of the United States inconsistent with the provisions of this act."  Indeed, sir, the new contract contended for could not have been effected merely by the repeal of any portion of the acts of 1869 and 1870.  Possibly you could abrogate the old contract by repealing those acts, but to make a new contract something should be added to them.  Those acts requited payment in "coin."  What is wanted now by the opponents of this bill is to find an act which inserts the word "gold" before "coin."  Such an act has not been discovered.

It has been said in the course of this debate that the Revised Statutes took a step toward demonetizing the silver dollar in advance of the act of 1873.  Section 3586 does indeed declare that "the silver coins of the United States shall be legal tender at their nominal value for any amount not exceeding $5 in any one payment."  That section does seem to include by its terms all the silver coins, whether issued from the Mint before the coinage act of 1873 or subsequently thereto, and dollars as well as subsidiary coins, and it is true that the Revised Statutes do repeal all prior acts upon the subject of coins and of legal tender;  but it is expressly provided that the repeal of said acts "shall not affect any act done or any right accruing or accrued."

There are, therefore, two reasons why I think the public creditor has no right to insist that the Revised Statutes changed the obligation of the debts he owned:  first, because that code declares its purpose not to affect any act already done or any right already accrued ---the rights of the creditors and the rights of debtors stood after that enactment just as they stood before the enactment--- and, secondly, because it was the whole purpose of that revision to leave not only rights but to leave laws precisely as they had been.  The revisers were not authorized to make any change in the law, but to preserve the law precisely as it stood.  The assent of tho two Houses was given to the code upon the assumption that the law had not been changed.  The very title proclaims the book to be "An act to revise and consolidate the statutes of the United States, in force on the 1st day of December, A.D. 1873," not to put a new act into force.

If there is an alteration in any of its provisions it is so clearly a mistake, so clearly the result of inadvertence, that a public creditor could not in conscience take advantage of it, and a private creditor would not be allowed to take advantage of it.  I conclude, therefore, that there is an utter failure to show any alteration in the contract made between the Government and its creditors by the acts of 1869 and 1870.  As that obligation was then so it is to-day, so far as the obligation is created by statute.  If the creditor insists upon payment, not in coin but in gold, he must stand upon the equity of his claims, and not upon the law of the land.

What, then, are the equities upon which such a claim can hope to stand ?  One is that the creditor came to the rescue of the Government in its distress.  When the Government needed money, money which could not be raised by taxation, then the capitalist advanced it;  advanced it liberally, bountifully, and should therefore be paid, not niggardly, but generously.

Two or three considerations somewhat impair the weight of this equity.  First, it is to be observed that the capitalist did not exactly fly to the rescue of the Government when it needed money.  When the Government needed money, money could not be borrowed at home or abroad.  Not abroad, for it did not suit the political purposes of foreign lenders to loan the Republic money.  Not at home, for it did not suit the convenience or the ability of our own capitalists to supply the amount needed.  The best that capital proposed to do for the Government was in the offer of the banks to loan the Government their own notes.  Those notes were not money and were not by any possibility to be converted into money.  The Government was therefore driven to the alternative of issuing its own notes.  It did issue its own notes.  It declared them a legal tender for debt, and being legal tender they found their way, as money does, into the vaults of the capitalists.  They took the notes as the soldier and the farmer and the manufacturer took them, because they were compelled to take them;  and they exchanged them for the bonds of the United States because they preferred to have the obligations of the Government, which promised interest as well as principal, and named a specific time of payment, rather than to hold the obligations of the same debtor, which name no time of payment and which promised no interest for forbearance.

When, therefore, the capitalist took the bonds of the United States he consulted, as it was his right to consult, his own interest.  I make no point upon the fact that they dealt with the notes as money until the volume was so swollen and the values of all other commodities were so enhanced that the bonds of the Government were deemed the best property on the market.  I make no point upon the fact that they did not pay in gold for their bonds, and did not pay in notes for them until the notes had fallen far below the par of gold.  The simple fact remains that they did exchange United States notes for United States bonds.  They did assume the risk, whatever that was, of the Government paying the bonds.  War cannot be prosecuted without some one incurring some risk.  Of course, before we stop building monuments to commemorate the various heroisms displayed during the late war, we shall erect one at least in memory of the daring exhibited by the capitalist who accepted United States notes as the conscript put on the United States uniform, because he could not help himself, and who, when he could not find anything better in the market to buy, exchanged the notes for interest-bearing bonds.  But does this heroism give to the doughty capitalist an equitable claim on the Treasury ?  Must it be paid for in cash ?

Others, besides the capitalist, assumed risks.  Farmers and mechanics accepted the same notes in exchange for their food and their fabrics.  They can get no bounty, for they hold no bonds.  A million volunteers stepped into the ranks of your armies.  They assumed some risk !  Three hundred thousand fell there !  No compensation can ever be made here for the risk they assumed.  More than one hundred thousand were disabled in that service.  They ask even yet that the pensions promised them may bear date from the time of their disability, and as yet we have not responded to that modest request.  The survivors in that struggle have thought the Government could afford to distribute a bounty among them of $25,000,000 or $50,000,000.  We have not acquiesced in that request.  These soldiers will hardly acquiesce in paying a bounty of two hundred millions to capital because of its daring.

By the sweat and the blood of that soldiery, by their sufferings and their sacrifices during the war, by the patient toil and hardy enterprise which they and their companions in labor have exhibited since the war closed, the public credit has been gradually lifted, until now every dollar represented by your debt, even if paid in the whitest silver ever issued from the Mint, has double the power in every market that any dollar invested in the old bonds ever had.

The air is filled with complaints that the public creditor is to be paid but ninety cents on a dollar;  that the public debt is to be scaled down.  If the assertion were true, which it is not, the public creditor ought to be glad to get even ninety cents on a dollar, considering the terms upon which he purchased, considering what untold sacrifice has been made to raise his purchase up even to ninety cents on the dollar.  If it were not unconstitutional for capital to be grateful, the purchaser of your bonds who gets even ninety cents upon the dollar ought to devote a handsome portion of that as a thank-offering.

It has been said that a stronger equity still is presented by those who have bought the bonds of the Government since the act of 1873 was passed.  The act of 1873 did say that the dollar of the fathers should no longer be coined;  but the act of 1873 imposed no sort of restriction upon the authority of any succeeding Congress to coin money.  The creditor may have referred to that act to see what metals were then recognized in our coinage;  but he was bound also to look at the Constitution, which Constitution grants to Congress and to every Congress the unrestricted authority to coin money and to regulate its value.  Congress might have contracted to pay its creditors in gold dollars and in gold dollars of 25 or of 250 grains and succeeding Congresses might have been bound by the contract, but it is not in the power of one Congress by contract to restrict the authority of any succeeding Congress to coin money.

It may be urged that it is a hardship for him who has purchased a bond upon the supposition that he was at some future time to be paid its face in gold to be told now that he will be paid in silver.  The hardship is not great.  If the quotations can be relied upon there is not a bond issued by the United States now on the market which cannot be sold for a premium.  The most that any holder can say in derogation of the proposed measure is that if Congress shall agree to it he will not make as much as he hoped to make from his purchase;  no man can say with truth that he will lose a dollar by his purchase.

I am therefore unable to see anything in the bill now before the Senate which either impeaches the good faith of the Government or impugns its sense of justice.  It fulfills its contracts to the very letter and it meets every demand that justice can urge against the Government;  so, if the question be one involving public faith, the bill preserves that faith both with the people and their creditors.  It lays upon the former no burden which they have not assumed and yields to the latter just what they bargained for.  But, in point of fact, sir, no such question is involved in the bill before the Senate.  The issue is not whether we shall pay ninety or one hundred and ten cents on the dollar of the public debt.  If the bill becomes a law the creditor will receive one hundred cents on the dollar;  if it fails to become a law the creditor will receive no more and no less than one hundred cents on the dollar.

Sir, we have no authority for saying that 412½ grains of silver are worth intrinsically less than 25.8 grains of gold. The former, I grant, brings less in the English and in the German markets than the latter, because England and Germany both proscribe silver and patronize gold. The silver brings less in our own markets. We have transmuted both into commodities, and accordingly we value both as we value our wheat, according to what they will bring in other markets. We cannot regulate the price of either metal in foreign markets;  we can regulate the price of both in our own markets. Restore both to the rank of money, and while they remain money they will have precisely the same authority. If you wish to send either abroad it will go not as money but as a commodity, and you will always naturally send whichever is most capable in the market to which you remit.

Mr. President, I do not regard the demonetization of silver as an attempt to wrench from the people more than they agreed to pay. That is not the crime of which I accuse the act of 1873. I charge it with guilt compared with which the robbery of two hundred millions is venial.

The pending bill does not promise to the people cheap money.  Every man who gets a silver dollar will pay for it the value of a gold dollar.  He will pay whatever the bullion price may be to the miner, and the balance he will pay to the Government for coinage, always assuming, as I cannot doubt, that the amendment reported by the Committee on Finance will be agreed to by the Senate.  The pending bill will not lower our standard of value but preserve that standard.  Sir, these are the reasons why I would remonetize silver:  First, because silver is an American product, and I am unwilling to legislate against such a product, no matter where it is found.  That, however, is a minor reason.  If all the bonanzas in all the Nevadas were in the middle of the Pacific I should still insist upon the remonetization of silver.

Sir, the world grew old, populous, productive, and commerce was born when the world had for a currency only gold and silver, together with such accessories as Virginia tobacco, Indian wampum, Grecian cattle, Carthagenian leather, and other like barbaric contrivances could supply;  but the quickening energies of civilization outgrew all these simple resources.  Bills of exchange, promissory notes, bankchecks, bank-notes, and other forms of credit supervened.  As population increased and spread over the surface of the earth, as production swelled, as machinery came to supply the want of manual labor, as the steamboat and the railway became common carriers, and harnessed lightnings drove the old couriers from their old beats, the volume of credit was inflated.  I shall not exhibit in figures the magic growth of this production, this commerce, or this credit.  The figures are within reach of every Senator.  Only one item I submit.

The debts contracted by different nations already aggregate the fabulous sum of nearly $23,000,000,000, and this is exclusive of all indebtedness contracted by the States composing this nation, and exclusive of all municipal, corporate, or individual indebtedness.  The enormous mass almost staggers belief.  One obligation has restrained the growth of this debt.  The law of every country has persistently tied its credit to its legal-tender issue.  With few exceptions the legal-tender issue is constituted of gold and silver coin.  The law has said everywhere, substantially, "promise what you please, but take care to promise no moneys which you cannot redeem in gold and silver coin, or in commodities measured by those coins;  not by one of them, but by both of them."  Such was the condition of the world a few years ago:  national debts aggregating nearly $23,000,000,000;  international trade three times as great;  domestic production, internal commerce, and private debts absolutely immeasurable in volume.  The circulating medium which moved this mass of business and resolved this fabric of debt was coin ---gold and silver coin.

The stock of coin in the whole western world was estimated in 1870 at 3,700,000,000. Of that sum $1,275,000,000 were estimated to be in silver. About that time the conspiracy seems to have been formed to withdraw from that circulation the silver in it;  that is, nearly one-third of the whole stock. But when you expel one dollar of coin from the circulating medium you compel the retirement of all bank issues based upon it, and you shrink the value of commodities measured by it.

I shall not detain the Senate by narrating the growth of this conspiracy.  A large part of Europe is already in it.  France, it is said, joined it since this debate commenced.  The practical question before us is, shall the United States become a party to it ?  For one, I decline.

Sir, this is not contraction;  this is strangulation.  This is not a question of heaping burdens upon the labor and enterprise of the people.  It is an attempt to paralyze that labor and that enterprise.  It is not a proposition to add 10 per cent. to the obligation of the public debt.  It is a deliberate effort to blast 33 per cent. of the ability of the people to pay the debt.

If the laws of the commercial world had from the beginning recognized barley and wheat to be grain, and contracts had been made to deliver 22,000,000,000 bushels of grain, and then if half that world should combine to prohibit the use of barley and to demand the delivery of wheat alone upon all grain contracts, I think the monstrous claim would startle the conscience of even our financial metropolis.  But that measure would be merciful in comparison with the one which confronts us.  That would leave the capacity to produce unshackled.  This strikes a fatal blow at that capacity.

Gentlemen rather flippantly characterize the friends of the pending bill as the victims of a "silver mania."  It is a mania which has possessed the world for thousands of years, and cannot now be dispelled by a sneer.  The honorable Senator from Michigan the other day, yielding for one delicious moment to the play of that exuberant fancy, which if not so sternly repressed would often, I fear, impel him into the domain of poetry, spoke of the measure as a "pest."  He traced its origin to the West, and classified it with the grasshoppers and the Colorado bugs.  Sir, I do not complain of this language;  I assume that it was quite parliamentary;  but I doubt if it was well considered;  and let me say to that honorable Senator, and to all honorable Senators, and to all honorable gentlemen everywhere, that the West is not likely to faint even under such withering sarcasm.  The West does not feel compelled to go to Wall street to study ethics.  The West knows her obligations and keeps them as well as other portions of this country or of the world.  She is not so old as the East and is not so rich as some portions of the East.  She has fewer millionaires, thank God, and fewer paupers as a consequence, but she will venture to submit her business morality to judgment at the Great Assize beside that of her sister States, no matter where they may be located.

Sir, this is not an issue between the East and the West.  It is an issue between productive effort and fixed capital.  I say it is an issue between those who depend upon production for making capital and those who rely upon investing the income of earned capital in production.  These are the two classes who hold up their hands to you to-day, and from the East as well as from the West ---for on this question there is no East and no West and no North and no South--- the welfare of all States and all countries is involved in it;  and I must be allowed to add you cannot put the energies and enterprise of this country in the pillory you are trying to erect and be sure of public content.  And should the people lose their temper under the exasperating influence of financial experiments their movements are likely to resemble nothing less than the flight of grasshoppers.  The simple truth is the people of the West and the people everywhere believe you are trying to alter their contracts, and they object to it.  They are as sincere in that belief as the chairman of the Committee on Finance is in his.  If they are in error, point out to them their error;  but you cannot convince them by vilifying them, by suborning newspapers to calumniate them, or by hiring caricaturists to make faces at them.  It is all the more difficult to convince them because they are not in error.  They are right.  As to the law of the case, the Colorado beetle declares the law;  and the Senator from Michigan, eminent as he is, both as jurist and statesman, does not declare it, and he dare not dispute the law as they lay it down.  As to the justice of the case, any beetle can interpret that more accurately than some have interpreted upon this floor.

Mr. President, the highest duty of this Government is to do exact justice to its citizens, debtors and creditors alike;  not to mutilate contracts, not to impair them, not to enlarge them, but to enforce them as made.  If it fail in this duty it is dishonored and disgraced.  But beyond this it owes a duty to civilization and to mankind, and in my judgment the time has come to assume that duty.  That duty is to give notice immediately and emphatically to the world that the United States will be no party to the atrocious attempt to shrivel enterprise to the standard of a single metal, that with our consent production shall not be manacled, that without our protest labor shall not be emasculated.

We are vociferously told that the President [RB Hayes] will veto the pending bill.  To that effect I will believe no tongue but the President's.  But if I had access to his ear I should not hesitate to tell him it was his duty not to thwart but to aid the friends of the bill in passing it, and to approve it when passed, and that it was his duty also, before the ides of March have come, to instruct every one of his ministers abroad to make early and earnest representation to the several governments to which they are accredited, that the dearest interests of millions now everywhere languishing in adversity, and of other millions which every succeeding generation must add, that the welfare of the world, if not its peace, demands the prompt remission of all efforts to ostracise either of the precious metals from the standard of value and from the medium of exchange.  I believe one-half the effort, to say nothing of the money, expended to bring this country into the great conspiracy, would explode the conspiracy.  But if other governments should prove deaf to these representations we could still show the suffering of all lands that there is here still a home for the oppressed where a generous soil and just laws await them, and where capital and labor are secured in their equal rights.

But we are told the cheaper metal will drive out the dearer and gold will be banished from our circulation.  Silver will not drive out anything.  Silver is not aggressive;  it is so much like the apostle's description of wisdom that it is "first pure, then peaceable, gentle;"  its opponents admit that it is too "easy to be entreated."  I believe His "full of mercy and good fruits," and I know it is "without partiality and without hypocrisy."  Put a silver and a gold dollar into the same purse and they will lie quietly together.  If the owner wishes to part with one he can part with either.  Neither will go abroad unless the owner sends it, and he will not send it unless he gets something he would rather have in exchange for it.  That does not impoverish the owner nor injure any one else.

But the gold, they say, will all disappear and we shall be deluged with silver.  Sir, let us not be frightened by terms "Be deluged with silver"  I admit the last deluge which visited the world was wet, uncomfortable, and destructive;  but a deluge of silver is quite another affair.  That is dry and so dense that the weakest swimmer could keep on the surface without the aid of an ark, and it would he so great a novelty that I would be glad to be visited by such a deluge.

But, again, it is so heavy to handle it !  Then do not handle it.  Accept the proposition moved by the Senator from Maine, [Mr. Blaine] let your mints stamp bars instead of coining dollars;  let the Treasury hold the bars, issue certificates for them, and then you will have a paper circulation not merely representing coin but actually convertible into coin at the pleasure of the holder.  But gold will not vanish in the presence of silver.  It has not fled from the presence of greenbacks, not even when greenbacks were worth less than forty cents on the dollar in gold.  The world has had all the gold it found absolutely necessary.

But after all we are asked, why not put into the silver dollar the present commodity value of the gold dollar ?  I answer, for many and most commanding reasons. First, debts, public and private, are contracted aggregating thousands of millions. Each dollar is payable by 412½ grains of silver. You have no right to compel the delivery of 440 or 454 grains for each dollar. That is filching;  only a few hundred millions, to be sure, but it is filching.

Secondly. Putting in that quantity of silver would make the measure a felo de se. The great object I aim at is to restore silver to that standard by which you measure the labor and the products of the world and to that medium by which you exchange the products of the world, and therefore I ask you to coin it into money once more. You say --yes, if you are allowed to put more into a dollar than can be procured for a dollar. Who does not see that silver can not be coined upon such terms ?  Daily we are told by the opponents of the bill that when the coinage act of 1873 was passed, silver dollars were not coined because 412½ grains could not be afforded for a dollar. This nation and other nations denounced silver as money, and it fell in the market. Now you generously offer to restore it at 454 grains to the dollar. When silver was money we could not get 412½ grains for a dollar in gold;  we demonetized it;  we can now buy, you say, 454 grains for a gold dollar.

So you will consent to remonetize silver at that rate ?  Suppose once more all existing contracts for dollars were, instead, contracts for so many bushels of grain;  that grain had in 1873 been recognized by commercial nations to include both barley and wheat, and both had commanded substantially the same price in the markets. Suppose then we had degrainetized barley;  had enacted that it should not be deliverable on grain contracts. Of course the demand for barley would thereby greatly diminish;  its price would decline. As the demand for wheat would correspondingly increase, its price would rise. Suppose we had watched the rise of wheat and the fall of barley until two bushels of the latter would only buy one of the former. Suppose there came to us then, as there would be sure to come, a cry like that we hear now:  "The world can not produce the wheat to fill our grain contracts;  barley is abundant, and for it there is little use. In the name of mercy regrainetize barley."  Can any one who knows the honorable chairman of the Committee on Finance conceive that he would respond to such a demand, "Yes, we will permit you to deliver barley for grain once more, provided you will deliver two bushels for one."

I insist that silver shall be restored to the medium of exchange;  but I am told that the two coins must be of equal value not only in our market but in all markets.  Well, I say the first step toward equalization of the two is to remonetize both.  When you have done that, I will agree to a convention of representatives from the commercial nations to establish a common relation.  There can be no question that the general recognition of silver as money would demonstrate that the ratio fixed by the pending bill is too high rather than too low.  But I will not consent to build a "lean-to" upon our coins so often as the malign legislation of any foreign government may succeed in discrediting the metal of which they are composed.

Mr. President, since the adjournment on Thursday last a petition has been received here from certain bankers in my own State.  One of them has favored me with a copy of the petition.  I know the signers.  I know them to be gentlemen of high character whose instructions I would be very likely to follow upon questions of this character.  What I have said this afternoon I have said more by way of explaining my course to this portion of my constituents than for any other purpose.  In the letter which accompanies this petition my correspondent says that the petition was sent to my honorable friend from Vermont, the chairman of the Committee on Finance, because it was feared that neither my colleague nor myself would indorse the petition.  The fear was well-grounded so far as I am concerned;  but I think the Senate knows that not only I but other Senators almost daily lay on your table petitions which the Senator presenting cannot indorse.  But my correspondent says:

This silver business seems pretty hard.  We have bought and sold United States bonds since 1863 and 1869, and Government has received gold coin evevy time, and now to compel people to take less is hard.

Of course that statement is true, or my correspondent would not have made it;  but it is one of the most extraordinary financial statements, I think, which has been made during the course of this debate;  and this debate will be memorable for the extraordinary statements it has elicited.  These bonds which my correspondent says be sold, and for which the Government has received gold, were issued under the acts of March 3, 1863, of March 3, 1864, of March 3, 1865 ---all except those which were issued under the act of July 14, 1870.  Every one of these loans was purchasable by the law in United States notes, and during the year 1863, of those notes it took $145.20 on an average to buy $100 in gold.  During the year 1864 it took $203.20 of those notes to buy $100 in gold;  during the succeeding year it took $157.70;  during the next year, $140.90;  during the next, $168.20;  during the next, $139.70;  and during 1869, $133.

I say in view of the fact that those bonds might have been paid for with those notes it seems a very strange thing that they should have been paid for in gold which was worth so much more.  But it is not to be supposed that an honorable banker would make a statement upon a grave question of this kind as within his own personal observation and knowledge that was not absolutely correct.

The petitioners assign several reasons why we should refuse to pass this bill.  I allude to just one and shall only expend a word upon that.  They say:

While the Government may have a technical right to pay a certain portion of its obligations in silver, we yet believe that an enforcement of this right would be a violation of the spirit of the contract with damaging results far in excess of the possible benefits, and to also cast a stain upon our commercial integrity and which it would take generations of time to wipe out.

"A technical right" to pay debts in silver coin.  How came that technical right to arise ?  What technical right is there about it or what chance for technicality ?  Either the public creditor has agreed to take silver or we have agreed to pay gold, one of the two.  If the last is the case, you must pay gold;  and, if the first is the case, no creditor has a right to talk of our taking advantage of a technicality.

When the farmer promises to deliver the crop on a hundred acres of wheat and tenders it, he should not be accused of skulking under a technicality because he declines to accompany the delivery of the crop with a deed of the land.

If we take advantage of the technicality we are told it will be accompanied by "damaging results far in excess of the possible benefits, and it would also cast a stain upon our commercial integrity and which it would take generations of time to wipe out."

One word and I have done.  The commercial integrity of this country, Mr. President, is not likely to suffer so long as the people pay just as they have agreed to pay;  and the commercial integrity of this country never can survive that time when the Government undertakes to wrest from the pockets of the people more than they have agreed to pay.  I plant myself on the law and the justice of the contract and I will guarantee the integrity of the country so long as the country stands by its contracts.

Mr. Thurman.  Mr. President, I desire to offer some observations on this bill, but it can hardly be expected that I shall do so at this late hour.

Mr. Hereford.  If the Senator yields to me, I shall move that the Senate adjourn.

Mr. Teller.  I desire to offer an amendment to the pending bill.

The Presiding Officer, (Mr. Davis, of West Virginia, in the chair.)  The proposed amendment will be received and ordered to be printed.  The Senator from West Virginia moves that the Senate adjourn.

The motion was agreed to;  and (at five o'clock and twenty-five minutes p.m.) the Senate adjourned.