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extraordinary if the country shall pay any attention to those persons who have already unmistakably indicated the evil animus which inspires them, by a pertinacious attempt to double the burden of debts by establishing a single standard of gold.

I do not propose to undertake to discuss, within the necessary limits of this communication, all the various aspects of these problems, or even any considerable number of them. But I observe:

1. That the transition from one standard of currency value to another is one of the most delicate and hazardous operations of government, and baffles more frequently than any other the wisest prescience of mankind. The most conspicuous case of that kind, and one enacted upon the most conspicuous theatre, was that of the transition of England, in 1821, from paper to gold. The controversy, in respect to its effects, has been vehement for half a century. It is still undecided, and the disputants agree in nothing except that the real effects were very little foreseen by the many supporters of the transition, and hardly more by the few who opposed it.

2. It is not a sufficient reason for the immediate or abrupt abandonment of a currency that it may have inherent defects, or has depreciated or has deranged prices. On the contrary, the greater the derangement of prices, the greater is the evil and the greater is the injustice unavoidably involved in a change to a sounder system, and the greater is the necessity of hastening slowly and cautiously in the work. The people of a country are to be neither blamed nor punished for having transacted their business, and made their purchases and engagements, on the basis of the actually existing money and prices.

3. It is said that the surplus revenues of the Government since the war, instead of having been applied to the interest-bearing debts of the country, should have been applied to the redemption and cancellation of the paper currency. The kernel of the controversy lies mostly at this point. The true view is, that the paper currency should have been, and ought now to be, maintained in full volume until the debts of the war are substantially paid off. To go back to ante-war money, ante-war wages, and ante-war prices, might be tolerable if, at the same time, we could go back to ante-war freedom from debt and ante-war lightness of national taxation. But to destroy the paper currency, and leave

the enormous debts contracted under that currency scarcely diminished, and to be paid off on the scale of wages and prices existing before the war, is an attempted robbery, as much in the broad light of day, and as completely unconcealed, as was that attempted in the demonetization of silver. It will surprise nobody that the persons and classes concerned in both attempts are the same. R. P. BLAND.

II.

ONE of the earliest and most important measures engaging the attention of Mr. Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, was the establishment of a Mint, "to correct," to quote from his celebrated report of 1791, "the immense disorder which already reigns in so delicate and important a concern" (as the currency), "and the still greater disorder which every moment is possible." The money in circulation at the time were coins from nearly every mint in the world, the greater part, however, being those of Spain and her colonies, at that time the chief source of the supply of the precious metals. The greater part of the coins were largely reduced in value from wear, while the amount of pure metal they contained depended upon the regulation of each mint. In the establishment of a system for the new nation, the first thing to be considered was the relative value of the two metals to be used-gold and silver-so that, with the two, there should be but one standard; the coins of each metal of similar denominations, or their multiples, to have equal values. In determining this point it became necessary to decide upon the metal best fitted to serve as the unit to which the value of the other should be referred. Mr. Hamilton, with a sagacity which never failed him, at once adopted gold as having the most uniform value. "That species of" (silver) "coin, the old piaster" (dollar) "of Spain," to quote further from his report of 1791, "has never had any settled or standard value, according to weight or fineness, but has been permitted to circulate by tale, without regard to either, very much as a money of convenience, while gold has had a fixed price by weight, with an eye to its fineness. This greater stability of the value of the gold coins is an argument of force for regarding the money unit as having been hitherto virtually at

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tached to gold rather than to silver. Twenty-four and six-eighths grains of fine gold have corresponded with the nominal value of the dollar in the several States, without regard to the successive diminutions of its" (the dollar's) "intrinsic worth. . . . The nominal value of the dollar in each State corresponds also with 24.75 grains of fine gold, and with something between 368 and 374 grains of fine silver. As long as gold, either from its intrinsic superiority as a metal, from its greater rarity, or from the prejudices of mankind, retains so considerable a preeminence in value over silver as it has hitherto had, a natural consequence of this seems to be that its condition will be more stationary. The revolutions, therefore, which may take place in the relative value of gold and silver will be changes in the state of the latter rather than of the former." Much more might be quoted to the same effect. Enough has been given to show that Hamilton grasped the whole subject. Whatever has followed in this country up to 1853 has been to confirm what he sought to establish, a relation of the two metals according to their value, referring that of silver to that of gold as the more uniform, and consequently the proper unit and standard. After full investigation and deliberation, Hamilton adopted the ratio of 1 to 15; the gold dollar, or unit, to consist of 24.75 grains, and the silver dollar 371.25 grains of pure metal. The result very speedily showed gold to be undervalued in the relation that was established. Having a legal competency less than its bullion or market value, it was exported as fast as coined, leaving the country with but one metallic money -silver. To remedy this mistake, various propositions were from time to time submitted, the object being to retain gold in the country by equalizing its value with silver. "Gold," to copy from a report made in 1819 by a committee of the House of Representatives, "can hardly be considered to form a material part of our money circulation for the past twenty-six years," that is, from the establishment of the Mint. Mr. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury in 1820, recommended that the ratio between gold and silver be established at 1 of the former to 15.75 of the latter. Nothing came, however, of his proposition, and many others of the same kind, till 1834, when the relative value of the two metals was established by law at 1 of gold to 16 of silver, the pure metal in the gold dollar being reduced from 24.75 to

23.2 grains to the dollar. A slight addition of value was made in 1837, by raising the amount of pure metal in the gold coins from 899.225 to 900-thousandths fine. The avowed object of the advocates of this change in the relative value of the two metals was to bring gold into circulation, and they determined to establish a rate which should not fail to accomplish the object. Such was the strength of the gold men that the measure passed by a vote of four to one in the Senate, and five to one in the House.

As the ratio established by Mr. Hamilton overvalued silver, in consequence of which gold was driven from the country, the act of 1834 undervalued silver to the extent of about one and a half per cent., in consequence of which its coins were driven from the country, leaving in circulation only gold and debased foreign silver coins. To correct this mistake, Mr. Corwin, in 1852, then Secretary of the Treasury, called the attention of Congress to the consequences that had resulted. "So soon," he said, "as the state of our foreign commerce, as is now the case, requires the exportation of specie, it is obvious that our silver coin must be exported while it can be procured, till the demand for exportation is supplied. . . . There seems to be but one immediate and direct remedy for this evil, and that is the one that has already been adopted in Great Britain, of changing the relative value between gold and silver coin by reducing the intrinsic value of the latter ... This could be advantageously done by making the” (silver) "dollar weigh 384 grains (in place of 4121), and the smaller coins in proportion. If such a scale of weights were adopted, the relation of silver in such pieces to gold would be as 14.884 to 1; and, if the present true relation of bullion value is about 15.675 to 1, the new proposed silver coin would be overvalued by about five per cent. . . . If this plan is adopted by Congress, it, of course, will involve the necessity of making silver coin a legal tender only for debts of small amount, not say exceeding ten dollars, which is about the same limit (forty shillings) which has been established in England."

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Pursuant to the recommendations of Mr. Corwin, Congress in 1853 passed a law reducing the weight of silver in coins of less denomination than one dollar, from the standard of 412.25 to 384 grains to the dollar, the half-dollar to weigh 192 grains, and the smaller coins in proportion; the coins of less than one dollar

not to be legal tender in payments exceeding five dollars at any one time. No change was made at the time in the amount of metal in the silver dollar, for the reason, to use the words of Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, who reported the bill establishing the subsidiary coinage, that "the great measure of adjusting the legal-tender ratio between gold and silver (as legal tender in unlimited amounts) cannot be safely attempted until some permanent relation between the market value of the two metals shall be established.” At that time the silver dollar, or rather the amount of metal in it, was at a premium in gold of 4.26 per cent., the premium having risen 1.69 per cent. from the previous year. Its price fluctuated rapidly, partly in consequence of the discoveries of gold in California and Australia. It was thought best, consequently, to await the permanent effect of these discoveries, before attempting to establish a relation that might have to be altered almost as soon as made. Congress could well postpone any action in reference to the relative value of the gold and silver dollar, for the reason that the latter, at the time, formed no part of the currency of the country, it having been taken up for export, as bullion, as fast as it came from the Mint. The effect of the act of 1853, consequently, was to place the country effectually upon a mono-metallic basis-as much so as if the silver dollar itself had been reduced to the position of a subsidiary coin-the only currency from our own Mint left in circulation being gold, and the subsidiary silver coins of denominations of less than one dollar. That such was the purpose of the act was fully shown by the speeches made on the occasion of its passage. That of Mr. Dunham, member of the House from Indiana, and chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, having charge of the bill, may be taken as embodying the sentiments of a great majority of the members of both Houses. In the course of his remarks in its support, he said:

"Another objection urged against this proposed measure (i. e., the reduction of the weight of the minor coins) is, that it gives us a standard of currency of gold only. What advantage is to be obtained by a standard of two metals, which is not as well if not much better attained by a single standard, I am unable to perceive. Wherever the experiment of a standard of a single metal has been tried, it has proved eminently successful. Indeed, it is impossible

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