spirit which, however vigorous, is known all over the world to be anything but healthy. There is no denying that the bonds between a country and her colonies are made stronger by the growth of trade relations, other things being equal. But how if this growth is secured artificially, by legislative higgling? The Englishman, free for fifty or sixty years from the protectionist squabbles which have been the bane of other governments, may well pause in affright as he conjures up visions of Australian log-rollers and Canadian pipe-layers introducing the din of tariff controversy into the proceedings of Parliament. Is it not as certain as anything in the future can be that the tariff question, the moment it was introduced, would be a constant source of friction and dissension? If the policy of sublime indifference to which the English have so resolutely adhered has omitted the forging of commercial chains with which the colonies might have been bound more firmly to her for a time, so, too, has it failed to breed the jealousies and quarrels and pettinesses which any attempt at protectionist conciliation will be sure to generate. A natural sentiment, "vigorous and healthy," will surely stand the test of time better than an artificial arrangement which, standing from the first on the level of a commercial bargain, would be sure to develop weak points of a thousand kinds, and would probably complicate, far more than it would strengthen, the relations now connecting the mother country with her colonies. When to this are added the enormous economic objections to a departure from the free-trade policy which England has so successfully pursued for fifty

ANCESTOR-WORSHIP IN FINANCE

(April 14, 1896)

The little controversy upon the money question which sprang up yesterday in connection with the Democratic pilgrimage to Monticello should serve to emphasize the absurdity of the shibboleths and rallying-cries which have done so much to confuse the actual issues with the unthinking. In point of fact, any sober-minded person must see at once that it is a matter of extremely little consequence what Jefferson or anybody else thought about the double standard a hundred years ago. The course of history since that time has entirely altered the question in a hundred ways. At the time of the formation of the Republic, the relative values of gold and silver had never been subject to such violent fluctuations as have prevailed in our time. If Jefferson did say, in a letter to Hamilton, "I concur with you that the unit should stand on both metals," it by no means follows that he would still be in favor of attempting to make it so stand when it was demonstrable that that was a quite impossible undertaking, and that the unit would not stand, but would tumble. Again, a hundred years ago we had few banks, the clearinghouse was of course an institution of the distant future, and in general those instrumentalities which the refined machinery of modern credit provides for making one dollar do the work of many were as nothing in comparison with what they are now. To quote Jefferson, as Mr. Daniel did yesterday, by way

of settling a modern financial question, is about as pertinent as it would be to quote him as to the relative importance of land and water transportation. We might as well appeal to "the fathers" to guide us in determining whether we should undertake the building of a canal from the Great Lakes to the seaboard, ignoring the existence of railroads, as quote their dicta on the currency question as furnishing conclusive guidance for our present action.

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But the most curious thing that is done in the way of substituting a superstitious ancestor-worship for the operation of reason, common sense, and the rules of honorable dealing, is the appeal that is made for silver on the ground of gold and silver being the money of the Constitution." Listening to a trueblue silverite on this subject, one would imagine that the injunction to use both gold and silver as money was one of the most explicit and most solemn of all the directions contained in the Constitution of the United States. Senator Daniel yesterday referred in a most pathetic manner to his reading "the plighted words 'gold and silver' in the Constitution of the land which he has sworn to support," and in listening to him one might have felt that the abandonment of silver was little short of treason. One might have felt so, that is, in the absence of any knowledge of the Constitution. The fact is that in defining the functions and powers of the Federal Government, neither the word gold nor the word silver is used at all. What is said about the powers or duties of the Federal Government in connection with money is contained in the single clause which provides that Congress "shall have power to coin

money, regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures." The words gold and silver occur in the Constitution in one place only; namely, in the enumeration of a series of things that the separate States are forbidden to do the provision occurs that " no State shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." This is, to begin with, no injunction at all upon the Federal Government; secondly, it is not a command upon the States to make any legal tender laws at all, but only a prohibition against their making any other than a certain kind of such laws; and thirdly, it does not say anything whatever about using both silver and gold, but only excludes anything else than silver and gold. If the States had been forbidden to use any form of capital punishment but hanging and beheading, it would hardly be argued that every man that was sentenced to death would have to be both hanged and beheaded, or even given his choice between the two. Such a provision, if it existed, would have been designed to exclude burning or breaking on the wheel, and not to insist upon both hanging and beheading. And so it is obvious that the prohibition relating to everything but gold and silver coin was meant, not to insist on both of them, but to shut out paper or base metal tokens.

The money question now confronting us is a great, living, practical question. The thing we have to decide is whether existing debts shall be paid in the money in which they were contracted, or shall be scaled 40 or 50 per cent, as the 16 to 1 people demand, or shall be kept in doubt and uncertainty, as