face value of one hundred cents, or a full dollar. It required the people to accept it as a legal tender, and is thus morally bound to maintain it at a parity with gold, which was then, as now, the recognized standard with us., and the most enlightened nations of the world. The Government having issued and circulated the silver dollar, it must in honor protect the holder from loss. This obligation it has so far sacredly kept. Not only is there a moral obligation, but there is a legal obligation, expressed in public statute, to maintain the parity. THEY COULD NOT BE KEPT AT PAR. These dollars, in the particulars I have named, are not the same as the dollars which would be issued under free coinage. They would be the same in form, but different in value. The Government would have no part in the transaction except to coin the silver bullion into dollars. It would share in no part of the profit. It would take upon itself no obligation. It would not put the dollars into circulation. It could only get them, as any citizen would get them, by giving something for them. It would deliver them to those who deposited the silver, and its connection with the transaction, there end. Such are the silver dollars which would be issued under free coinage of silver at a ratio of sixteen to one. Who would then maintain the parity? What would keep them at par with gold? There would be no obligation resting, upon the Government to do it, and if there were, it would be powerless to do it. The simple truth is we would be driven to a Silver basis—to silver monometallism. These dollars, therefore, would stand upon their real value. If the free and unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio of sixteen ounces of. silver to one ounce of gold would, as'some of its advocates assert, make fifty- three cents in silver worth one hundred cents, and the silver dollar equal to the gold dollar, then we would have no cheaper money than now, and it would be no easier to get. But that such would be the result is against reason and is contradicted by experience in all times and in all lands. It means the debasement of our currency to the amount of the difference between the commercial and coin value of the silver dollar, which is ever changing, and the effect would be to reduce property values, entail untold financial loss, destroy confidence, impair the obligations of existing contracts, further impoverish the laborers and producers of the country, create a panic of unparalleled severity, and inflict upon trade and commerce a deadly blow. Against any such policy, I am unalterably opposed. BIMETALLISM. Bimetallism can not be secured by independent action on our part. It can not'be obtained by opening our mints to the unlimited coinage of the silver of the world, at a ratio of sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold, when the commercial ratio is more than thirty ounces of silver to one ounce of gold. Mexico and China have tried the experiment. Mexico has free coinage of silver and gold at a ratio slightly in excess of sixteen and a half ounces of silver to one ounce, of gold, and while her mints are freely open to both metals at that ratio, not a single dollar in gold bullion is coined and circulated as money. Gold has been driven out of circulation in these countries and they are on a silver basis alone. Until international agreement is had, it is the plain duty of the 5
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