used as money without bimetallic treaties. The relative value of gold and silver, disturbed for a time by the disproportionate yield of silver following the discovery of America, finally settled in 1650 to between 15 and 16 to 1, and so remained for 225 years, although the first case of an international arrangement, the Latin Union treaty, did not occur until 1865. That treaty was between four countries, all of which were already on the double standard, and all of which had the same ratio, viz.: 15 to 1. It was made to secure a common use of the metallic money of the four countries, and had no reference to the general question of the metallic standards.

The world has had a long experience, independently of international treaties, of that steadiness of the relative value of the two metals which results from the magnitude of their mass, representing the accumulation of ages, which is so vastly in excess of their annual production.

No cause of equal magnitude, tending to disturb the relative value of the metals, as the transition of Germany from the single standard of silver to the single standard of gold, will probably recur for centuries. After that transition had spent its force we have the following record of the average gold price per ounce of the British standard silver during each of the past six years, in the London market, as given by the London Economist, February 21, 1885:

These fluctuations, in the opinion of Professor Walker, are so intolerable, that in order to avoid them we must give up silver, unless there is a general coinage of it in Europe; and in the same article he admits that the abandonment of silver will result in "the enhancement of the burden of all debts and fixed charges, acting as a steady drag upon production," and that "suffocation, strangulation, are words hardly

too strong to express the agony of the industrial body when embraced in the fatal coils of a contracting money."

To such evils, by no means too vividly portrayed, may this country never be brought to submit, by false alarms, as to the danger of a single silver standard."

That our present rate of coinage will ever result in such a standard is a remote and improbable contingency even if it should occur, it would be a less misfortune than that of suffering our currency, by discarding silver, to be appreciated to any height to which selfish bankers and money capitalists in this country and in Europe may be able and disposed to carry gold.

It is of infinite importance to maintain the steadiness of the value of our own currency, and of our own prices. In comparison with this it is of little importance what the relation of value may be between our currency and that of foreign countries. N. P. HILL.

SILVER COIN AND SILVER CERTIFICATES.

A speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, December 15, 1884, on the consideration by the Senate of the following resolution, submitted by Mr. HILL, December 4, 1884:

Resolved, That in the existing depressed condition of the industrial interests of the country, and in presence of the great fall which has taken place, and is still in progress, in the wages of labor and in the prices of the products of farms, workshops, mills, and mines, the recommendations of the President and of the Secretary of the Treasury that the coinage of silver dollars and the issue of silver certificates shall be immediately and unconditionally prohibited are calculated to create alarm, and thereby aggravate the difficulties of the situation; and that, to the end that the public mind may be quieted by the assurance that if the total volume of the currency is not to be enlarged in correspondence with the increasing population and exchanges of the country, it shall at least not be reduced by suspending the coinage of silver dollars, the Senate declares its opinion to be that no valid reason exists at the present time for imposing any new and additional restrictions upon either the coinage of silver dollars or the issue of silver certificates.

MR. PRESIDENT: The recommendations in respect to silver contained in the recent annual message of the President and recent annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury are such as to require some expression of opinion of this body. They are inopportune to an alarming degree when falling prices prove that money is deficient, rather than too abundant. They are singularly ill-timed in view of the monetary conference of the Latin Union to be held on the 15th of next month, which must be influenced unfavorably to silver if this country shall indicate a disposition to abandon its support and shall actually depreciate it by ceasing to coin it. Furthermore, these recommendations are extraordinary and extreme in their character in this, that they advise the summary prohibition not merely of the further coinage of silver dollars, but of the further issue of certificates for the 187,000,000 of those already coined. As the certificates are daily paid into the Treasury for taxes they will disappear altogether from the circulation if there are no new issues or reissues, and with the inevitable result of making the Treasury the

owner of one hundred and forty-seven millions of the one hundred and eighty-seven million silver dollars now coined. In this statement I assume that the channels of circulation will absorb only about forty millions of silver in the metallic form. The consequence must be that there will be no gold in the ownership of the Treasury. It is impossible that the Secretary does not foresee this result, and no motive for his recommendation can be suggested except the belief that the accumulation of silver in the Treasury to the exclusion of gold would lay a foundation for a future demand that the silver dollars already coined shall be demonetized, melted down, and withdrawn from use as money. It is plain that the real scope of the policy of the President and the Secretary of the Treasury is not merely to prevent a further issue of the silver-dollar money, but to insure the destruction of the amount now in existence, by depriving it of the facility of circulation which it acquires from the use of certificates and by forcing into the ownership of the Treasury the whole of it except the forty millions or thereabouts which will circulate in the metallic form.

In respect to the report of the Secretary of the Treasury it is keeping well within the bounds of a proper reserve in language to say that his several times repeated affirmations that the United States has outstanding "gold obligations amount to an open defiance to the law-making power, to which he and all executive officers owe obedience.

There never was a gold obligation authorized by law in this country, and no obligation was ever issued by it expressed to be payable in gold. I am quite aware that during the discussions of 1876 and 1877 it was claimed that certain bonds expressed to be payable in coin were by the bondholders understood and expected to be paid in gold; but the law-making power in the act of February 28, 1878, directing the resumption of the coinage of the silver dollar, settled all doubts by declaring that such coin should be a "tender for all debts and dues, public and private," and in addition to that the great bulk of the bonds of the United States now in ex

istence, that is, $906,297,103 out of a total of $1,182,147,100, have been issued and bear date since the law of February, 1878.

On this subject I prefer to give my views by quoting the language of an eminent citizen of New York who has filled the offices of Attorney-General of the United States and Minister to England, Hon. Edwards Pierrepont. In a letter to the New York Times, of April 18, 1884, Mr. Pierrepont says:

There is not an outstanding bond, coupon, or greenback issued by the United States which may not be lawfully paid in silver. Not one of them on its face or back, or in the statute authorizing the issue, or in declaration or resolution of Congress, has any proviso that they shall be paid in gold. And the act of February 28, 1878, directing the coinage of silver dollars, declares that such dollars "shall be a legal tender at their nominal value for all debts and dues, public and private, except where otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract."

It is asserted in both the President's message and the Secretary's report that one of the consequences of the payment by the Government of all its debts in silver would be the impairment of the national credit, although no explanation is given how a refusal to pay gold can injure the character of a country which has never promised to pay gold, and which has a law on its statute-books admonishing everybody who deals with it that the standard silver dollar is, and shall be, a tender for everything which it owes, unless it is "otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract."

To-day and always since the resumption of the silver dollar coinage the Government has paid more or less silver dollars or silver certificates to its creditors of every description, including the holders of its bonds, and all the while its credit has been growing stronger instead of weaker. It is only in its clearing-house transactions with certain banks, notably the banks of the city of New York, that it pays nothing but gold or greenbacks as a matter of special favoritism. This is not in conformity with the spirit of the act of Congress passed in July, 1882, forbidding national banks being members of any clearing-house having a rule excluding silver and