event. I do not believe that silver dollars, if coined to the extent of ten times fifty millions, would depreciate in the market relatively to gold dollars, even on the supposition that the relative value of gold and silver bullion remains what it is now. It will, however, be sufficient to justify opposition to the plan of suspending the coinage of silver dollars, if it can be shown satisfactorily that no risk of their depreciation is involved in continuing their coinage at the present annual rate of about twenty-seven and one-half millions for ten years longer, at the end of which time their total coinage would amount to about three hundred and eighty millions.

The Director of the Mint estimates that on the 1st day of November, 1881, there was in this country $563,000,000 of gold, including coin and "bullion at the mints and assay offices available for and awaiting coinage," to which is to be added, say, 105,000,000 silver dollars, making a total of $668,000,000 of full-tender metallic money. There is in every country maintaining specie payments a certain minimum below which the full-tender metallic money cannot be reduced. I do not affirm that in the United States this minimum may not be a sum somewhat below $668,000,000. It is impossible to form an exact judgment upon questions like that. But grouping all the facts of the case, first, that our metallic money is now actually $668,000,000; second, that our population, wealth, and exchanges are rapidly increasing; third, that the metals are now as much excluded from the circulation as it is possible to exclude them by paper issues, inasmuch as $1 and $2 money notes are already in use; and, fourth, that other specie-paying countries use an amount of metallic money at least as large, allowing for differences in population and other circumstances, as $668,000,000 is for this country, the conclusion seems inevitable that the possible minimum of metallic money in the United States is not below that amount. Whatever it may be, gold must form a part of it until the quantity of coined silver equals or exceeds the possible minimum. This principle has been very clearly set forth and strongly sustained by George M. Weston, an able financial

writer, in an article in the Economist, dated July 24, 1880.

He says:

The conclusion upon the whole case may be summed up by saying that so long as the United States continues to be a specie-paying and bimetallic country gold dollars will not command a premium in exchange for silver dollars, whatever the quantity of the latter may be, unless the silver coinage has passed the minimum limit of the total metallic money required to maintain the equilibrium of prices in this country with the general range of such prices in the foreign countries with which we maintain relations of trade.

The question of how much silver money can be maintained at a parity with gold money is governed by this principle.

There cannot be a sensible discount upon silver coin without such a premium upon gold coins as will expel them from circulation. Such an expulsion is impossible until the silver coinage exceeds the amount below which our total metallic circulation cannot be reduced.

I have said before, that at the present rate of coinage in ten years from this time we should have $380,000,000 of silver coin. No one can maintain that $380,000,000 is above the possible minimum of metallic money required by this country. If not, it cannot be maintained that 380,000,000 of silver dollars will depreciate relatively to gold dollars. And it is not to be forgotten here that the real question presented in this case is not the possible minimum of metallic money at this time, but the possible minimum ten years hence, until which time the silver coinage at its present rate will not have reached $380,000,000. In 1892 our wealth will be double what it is now, and our population, instead of being 52,000,000, as it is to-day, will be 67,000,000, or almost equal to the present aggregate population of France and of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which have now an aggregate full-tender metallic circulation of more than four times $380,000,000.

What has been the experience of other specie-paying countries which use both the metals and keep them at parity by limiting the coinage of one of them? Four countries,

France, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, since 1874 have maintained specie payments and a bimetallic circulation. On the 6th of October last (I take the estimates of the Director of the Mint, in round figures, not giving the fractions of millions) France had $874,000,000 of gold and $545,000,000 of silver legal-tender coin. Over 38 per cent. of her entire metallic money is silver; of her silver money 30 per cent. was held as reserves in the bank, and 70 per cent. was in active circulation.

At the same time Holland had $29,000,000 of gold and $56,000,000 of silver. About 66 per cent. of her metallic money was silver, and 40 per cent. of the silver was in active circulation.

If of the $668,000,000, which is our total metallic money, 38 per cent. consisted of silver, as in France, we should have $254,000,000. If two-thirds of it consisted of silver, as in Holland, we should have $440,000,000.

The mint ratio of silver to gold is, in Holland, 15.604 to 1, and in France it is 15 to 1, while it is 16 to 1 in this country; so that the bullion value (measured in gold) of Dutch silver coins is about 24 per cent. and of French silver coins about 3 per cent. less than the bullion value (measured in gold) of American silver coins.

Furthermore, the use in the United States of silver certificates (which are not known in Holland or France) favors a larger proportionate circulation of silver here than in either of those countries. In both France and Holland the parity of value in the market of the two classes of coins is perfectly preserved. The Paris correspondence of the London Economist, of November 10, 1881, says: "There is no premium on gold." A dispatch from Mr. Birney to Mr. Evarts, dated "The Hague, March 17, 1880," says: "The money in circulation is chiefly silver. Silver, gold, paper-money, and bank notes are at par."

This parity of value between gold and silver coins in Holland and France continues to the present time, and it does not appear that anybody in either of those countries suggests

the possibility of its being disturbed. The same parity exists in Belgium and Switzerland, in both of which countries the proportion of silver may be presumed to be as large as it is in France, as both belong to the Latin Union.

The French example shows that silver coins constituting 38 per cent. of a metallic currency will preserve their parity with gold coins, while the Dutch example shows that they may constitute two-thirds of a currency and still maintain the same parity.

We have had now nearly four years' experience of the effects of the coinage of silver under the act of February, 1878, and it is certainly true that they have in no particular verified the evil prophecies of its enemies, and that the benefits expected from it have been, in an important measure, realized, although the administration of the act has been all the time in unfriendly hands.

In his annual report of 1879, the Secretary of the United States Treasury, after quoting his own recommendation of the previous year, that the silver-dollar coinage be arrested at the limit of $50,000,000, proceeded to say:

I again respectfully call the attention of Congress to the importance of further limiting the coinage of the silver dollar. Owing to its limited coinage it has been kept at par, but its free coinage would soon reduce its current value to its bullion value, and thus establish a single silver standard. The inevitable result would be to exclude gold coin from circulation. It is impossible to ascertain what amount of silver coin, based upon the ratio of sixteen of silver to one of gold, can be maintained at par with gold, but it is manifest that this can only be done by the Government holding in its vaults the great body of the silver coin.

The Secretary cannot too strongly urge the importance of adjusting the coinage ratio of the two metals by treaties with commercial nations, and, until this can be done, of limiting the coinage of the silver dollar to such a sum as, in the opinion of Congress, would enable the Department to readily maintain the standard dollar of gold and silver at par with each other.

Having failed to persuade Congress in 1878 that $50,000,000 was the maximum limit of safety in coining silver dollars, we find the Secretary asking Congress in 1879 to form its own opinion as to what the maximum limit of safety was. The

urgency as to coming to a decision upon that point was not so apparent to the legislative body as to the Secretary, and the last Congress declined to act at all in the matter.

In no wise discouraged by the repeated refusals of Congress to adopt his views, the Secretary, in his report of December, 1880, when the silver-dollar coinage had reached $75,000,000, advised that it be peremptorily arrested at that point, or that the weight of the dollar (said by many to be already oppressively burdensome) should be increased to 450 grains, and that at such weight only so many be coined as in the opinion of Treasury officials might be called for by the wants of the public. His language was:

The Secretary respectfully but earnestly recommends that the further compulsory coinage of silver be suspended, or, as an alternative, that the number of grains of silver in the dollar be increased so as to make it equal in market value to the gold dollar, and that its coinage be left as other coinage to the Secretary of the Treasury or the Director of the Mint, to depend upon the demand for it by the public for convenient circulation.

It is confidently believed that a silver dollar containing 450 grains, based upon a ratio of 1 of gold to about 17.5 of silver, could be safely coined, as demanded for use and exportation.

These persistent recommendations of the head of the Treasury Department, in 1878, 1879, and 1880, that the further minting of silver dollars be arrested, were all based upon the view, reiterated in various forms of language, that the continuation of such coinage would "soon" reduce the value of the coined silver dollar to its bullion value, of which the "inevitable result would be to exclude gold coin from circulation," and thus to "establish a single silver standard." In 1878 he feared these results, if the silver coinage should go beyond $50,000,000, and he invoked the attention of Congress to the imminency of the danger. In 1880, when the coinage had reached $75,000,000, he advised that the danger was close upon us, and that no time should be lost in adopting remedial measures.

I do not call in question either the intelligence or the patriotism of the distinguished gentleman who was at the