can be more ingenious than the phraseology in which this proposition is clothed, but it will not bear the test of a close examination.

The demand in this country for the coinage of silver was not based upon such a preference for silver over gold, and especially not upon such a preference for silver over paper kept equal to coin by convertibility, as would induce anybody having a warrant upon the United States Treasury to demand its payment in silver. It is notorious that the people of this country almost universally prefer to handle convertible paper rather than either of the metals. As between the two metals silver is the least convenient, by reason of its greater weight and bulk for the same value. It would only be in rare and exceptional cases that anybody would demand silver in preference to gold at the United States Treasury or anywhere else. It was not a preference for silver over gold which induced the support of the silver-coinage law of 1878.

It was the inadequacy of gold, in point of quantity, which led the country to demand that it should be supplemented by another metal, admitted to be less convenient, but the inconIveniences of which could be mainly avoided by the use of certificates. What the country wanted was not silver money as a matter of preference, but more metallic money than could be obtained from the gold mines alone. It was the necessity of silver coinage, as a means of averting a contraction of money disastrous to mankind, and the general desire of the country, based upon that and other public considerations, that there should be such a coinage, which constituted together that demand for silver dollars which induced Congress, in 1878, to order them to be struck at the mints, and which has induced subsequent Congresses to continue the same policy. That is the only kind of demand, for any species of money, which can legitimately be taken into account by legislators, in either creating currencies or in regulating their volume. But according to the new rule proposed to be applied to silver dollars, the amount coined is to be regulated by the calls for them by a particular class of persons who may have

the right to receive payments at the Treasury. On this plan the silver coinage will be dependent as to the amount of it, and indeed as to whether there shall be any at all, not upon the general public interest of the country, or upon the lawmaking power, but upon the caprice and personal interests of individuals.

If this is the proper method of regulating the coinage of silver, no reason can be imagined why it is not equally the proper method of regulating the coinage of gold and the issue of greenbacks. If no more silver should be coined, why should any more gold be coined than there is a demand for at the Treasury? And if as much silver should be coined why should there not be as many greenbacks issued as there is a demand for at the same place? If this new rule of issuing money was applied to gold and to greenbacks the coinage of gold would immediately cease altogether, while the issue of greenbacks would be enlarged. The holders of greenbacks have had them redeemed in gold since January 1, 1879, if they desired it, but have very rarely desired it. The total amount of gold demanded for their redemption has been absolutely insignificant. Since the same date very few persons, if any, having the right to be paid money at the Treasury have desired to be paid in gold in preference to being paid in any other money.

The Senator from Ohio, when he was at the head of the Treasury, was obliged, for the purpose of economizing the use of bank notes and greenbacks, to issue an order requiring persons having the right to payments to accept a part in silver and a part in gold. At no time during the past six years has there been any appreciable demand for gold at the Treasury. If the coinage of gold was subjected to the same rule that it is proposed to apply to the coinage of silver, the Secretary would not have the right to coin gold so long as he had enough already coined to meet demands upon him; and therefore, as there has been all the time a large amount of gold in the Treasury, the coinage of that metal must have ceased during the past six years, and there is no probability that there would be any coinage of it for years to come.

But the

fact that no preference has been shown for gold the past six years does not prove that there are not considerations of the highest public importance which require the coinage of gold.

The time is most inopportune for stopping the coinage of silver when our bank-note currency is undergoing a considerable contraction, and when it is by no means certain that Congress will be able to agree upon any measure which will avert its further and greater contraction. The situation in respect to our paper money is admitted on all sides to be a very grave one. The volume of the greenbacks is fixed absolutely by law, while the volume of bank notes tends to diminish from the cancellation of the Government bonds upon which they rest. Their contraction has not been seriously felt because their place has been supplied by silver.

Why should the United States, the principal silver-producing country of the world, attempt this dangerous experiment of stopping its coinage, or of suspending for a time its purchase? What is there in the condition of the business of this country which demands it? At the present rate of coinage there is no possibility of depreciation of the silver dollar for years to come. The volume of money is not too large, as shown by a tendency to falling prices. There is no inflation of the currency, and it is contraction rather than inflation which is now threatened.

By the addition of $187,000,000 of silver to the money of the country we have increased its volume and have thereby in some measure sustained the wages of labor and the prices of the product of the soil and of the factory. Of the many and dire disasters predicted as the result of this addition it is not pretended that a single one has yet been realized, and the dates for the fulfillment of the prophecies of evil are constantly postponed. In this state of things the country will, I hope, conclude that it is wise to let the silver-coinage law alone so long as it works well, and that it is unwise to throw away its important and admitted advantages, from a fear of prospective, certainly far-distant, and perhaps wholly imaginary dangers, and for which, if they shall ever come, our successors may be trusted to find appropriate remedies.

SILVER COINAGE.

A REPLY TO SENATORS MORRILL AND BAYARD.

Speech delivered in the Senate of the United States, February 26, 1885, the Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, having under consideration the bill (H. R. 4976) for the retirement and recoinage of the tradedollar

MR. PRESIDENT: In replying to Senators who have in this debate advocated the extraordinary amendment proposed by the Finance Committee to the pending bill, I must take up successively some of the points which they have made, and this will necessarily give to my remarks somewhat of a desultory character.

The Senator from Vermont [Mr. Morrill] praises the Secretaries of the Treasury for "pushing and industrious zeal" in attempting, as he thinks unsuccessfully, to get silver into circulation. Among these displays of zeal does he count the acquiescence of successive Secretaries in the action of the New York clearing-house, the principal point of Government payments, in the rule adopted by it on the 12th of November, 1878, under which neither silver dollars nor silver certificates were to be received at all for clearing-house balances?

Does he regard this assent of the Treasury Department to the tabooing of silver as money, at the place where the bulk of the Government disbursements is made, as being compensated for by its show of favor to the silver dollars, in sending them to the few people who may happen to make special application for them? In what light does he regard the action of the Treasury Department in 1882, and down to the present time, in tacitly agreeing, and in strictly acting upon its tacit agreement, not to offer silver in discharge of

its balances at the New York clearing-house after the New York banks had been compelled by Congress to repeal the rule under which silver was made non-receivable? Did this show a "pushing and industrious zeal" in circulating silver, or even a decent regard of the Treasury Department to the law-making power?

The violation by the banks of New York of the plain intent of the act of 1882 in respect to the settlement of clearing-house balances in silver certificates, and the palpable connivance of the present Secretary of the Treasury and of his immediate predecessor in this misconduct of those institutions, have been many times pointed out in this Chamber. An occurrence which took place on the 9th of this month adds to their misdoings very aggravating features of evasion and hypocrisy. On the day referred to, and, as is believed, by a preconcert between the banks and the Treasury Department, the assistant treasurer at New York tendered to the banks in part settlement of the clearing-house balances a small sum in silver certificates, stated by the New York papers to be $120,000, and the banks accepted it.

The local editor of the New York Tribune, a paper which has been distinguished for its zeal in supporting the refusal of the banks to receive silver certificates, gives in that paper of February 11 the following account of the motives of the banks in seeming on the 9th to have relaxed in their exclusion of silver:

It is understood that the Monday payment by the subtreasury was intended to accomplish two objects, to soothe any jealousy on the part of country banks and to enable the Secretary of the Treasury to answer satisfactorily the Congressional inquiry whether any national banks or clearing-house associations refused to accept silver or silver certificates. As the New York clearing-house has now accepted silver in payment of balances, both it and the subtreasury have complied with the Federal law. It is generally understood by bank officers that payment in silver will not be repeated except in cases of emergency.

This acceptance of silver certificates on the 9th instant is thus admitted to have been partly a temporary sham to enable the Secretary of the Treasury to answer troublesome