CHAPTER X.

CURRENCY AND COINAGE-GOLD AND SILVER.

As already stated, the only two subjects upon which the Democracy of this great country differed within the past century, were slavery, and that of the ratio of metals in coinage.

The first was settled by the abolishment of slavery. The silver question we have still with us.

The author offers a few suggestions upon that question, with the hope, that the discusssion of the subject may be proceeded with, in a more deliberate manner. When passion and prejudice become elements in a discussion, reason is not unfrequently entirely laid aside. We ought to be willing to coolly reason and deliberate, rather than denunciate.

We always supposed that the opinions and practices of the earlier founders of our government, were held in great reverence by everybody. They were far removed from the passions and self interests engendered in these our days in the pursuit of wealth; and had no such temptations to swerve correct and patriotic judgment to the same extent as the men of the present generation; they had thoroughly read the history of ancient and modern nations, besides they were men who had experienced the weight of monarchical institutions, and we venerate them accordingly, as good children look for guidance upon their ancestors, whom they are well convinced have their own very best interests at heart. Hence they are greatly influenced by what the fathers said upon any subject un

der consideration. So also we are just as anxious to avoid their mistakes, when they have been demonstrated to have been such which must be conceded have sometimes confronted us; so too, should we consider the circumstances under which their words were spoken and advice given, and then act for ourselves accordingly. On the subject of coinage, we perhaps can find no better instructors than such as Jefferson, Jackson and Benton -three stalwart Democrats, who had something to do with settling the question of coinage in the earlier days of our Republic.

Jefferson and Hamilton were the two characters who agreed upon the coinage law of 1792-there seems to have been no difference of opinion thereon between Democrat and Federalist then. In the performance of the duty assigned to them by Congress, that of reporting on coinage, the subject of the ratio for coinage, agreed upon a proportion of 15 gold to one of silver-so far as value was to be considered.

The dollar was to be the unit of value, and gold was to be worth and coined as if worth fifteen and a half times more than silver. Within the course of forty years there came a time when this proportion worked injury to the people, and President Jackson took up the matter to seek to remedy it. Senator Tom Benton was his spokesman in the Senate and we can find out exactly what he said, because he has recorded his language with his own hand, in his "Thirty Years View" while in the Senate.

In remarks submitted to the Senate on the subject, recorded by himself at page 383, Vol. I, we have his

views, more at length than we can quote, limited as we are for space.

He said "no nation had (in 1834) a better currency than the United States. There was no nation that had guarded its currency with more care. The framers of the Constitution, and those who had enacted the early statutes on the subject, were hard money men. They had felt and appreciated the evils of a paper medium of exchange and they had seduously guarded the currency of the United States from debasement. The legal currency of the United States was gold and silver coin. This was a subject in which congress had run into no folly. Gold and silver currency was the law of the land at home, and the law of the world abroad.

"There could, in the present (in 1834) condition of the world be no other currency." At page 436, he said “The word currency was not in the constitution nor any word which could be made to cover a circulation of bank notes. Gold and silver was the only thing recognized for money. It is the money and only money of the constitution; and every historic recollection, as well as every phrase in the Constitution, and early statutes on the subject confirmed that idea."

"People were sick of paper money, at the time the constitution was framed. The congress of the federation in time of the Revolution had issued a currency of paper money. It had run the full career of that class of money. The wreck of two hundred millions of dollars lay upon the land. The framers of the constitution worked in the midst of that wreck. They saw the havoc which paper money had made upon the fortunes of individuals, and the morals of the public. They determined to have no more Federal paper money. They created a hard money government; they intended the new government recognize nothing for money but gold and silver; and every word admitted into that Constitution upon the subject of money, defines and establishes that sacred intention." Hence those who constantly quote the fact, that

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gold and silver comprise the money of the Constitution, have the truth of that fact--but that does not fix the ratio of its use? Not at all.

On page 443 he gives other reasons for using gold and silver as money. He says:

"I. It has intrinsic value (qualities) which gave it currency all over the world to the full amount of that value, without regard to laws or circumstances.

"2. It had uniformity of value which made it the safest standard of value of property, the wisdom of man had ever yet discovered.

"3. Its portability (gold) which made it easy for the traveller to carry it about with him.

“4. Its indestructibility:--which made it the safest money which people could keep in their houses.

“5. Its inherent purity:—which made it the hardest money to be counterfeited, and the easiest to be detected, if it was, and therefore again, the safest money for the people to handle.

"6. Its superiority over all other money; which gave to its possessor the choice and command of all other money.

"7. Its power over exchanges, gold being the currency, which contributed most to the equalization of exchange, and keeping down the rate of exchange to the lowest and most uniform point.

"8. The power over the paper money; gold being the natural enemy of that system, and with fair play able to hold it in check.

❝9. It is a constitutional currency, and the people have a right to demand it for their currency, as long as the present constitution is permited to exist."

Again on page 443 of the same volume, he said, "It was not the time to discuss the relative value of gold and silver, nor to urge the particular proportion which ought to be established between them-that would be the work

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of a committee, yet it was sufficient for him to say, that the ratio was not one of commerce-it was purely and simply a mercantile problem, as much so as any ordinary acquisition of mechandise from foreign countries could be. Gold goes where it finds its value, and that value is what the great nations give it. In South America and Mexico, (California then belonged to Mexico) the countries which produce it, and from which the United States must derive their chief supply, the value of gold is 16 to I. In Cuba it is (in 1834) 17 to 1; in Spain and Portugal 16 to 1-and in the West Indies, generally the same. It will not be supposed," he said, "that gold will come here if the importer is to lose one dollar on sixteen that he brings; or that our gold will remain with us, when an exporter can gain one dollar upon every fifteen that he carries out." Again on page 445, he says, "that we had seen already, that in the establishment of the mint, gold was then largely undervalued; and that undervaluation had driven gold out of the country, and left a vacuum for the circulation of United States Bank notes; and we were now to see, that the same mint was to give further aid to the circulation of these notes, by excluding both gold and silver from circulation, thus enlarging the vacuum which was to be filled by bank paper." On page 449 he says, "that it was the coming power; a power that belongs to the sovereign (the people) and when a paper currency was tolerated, the coinage power was swallowed up and superseded by the manufactory which emitted paper.'

On page 451 he said "it was a question to be studied as the philosopher studies the laws which govern the material world; as he would study the laws of gravitation and attraction, the movements of the planets, or draw the water from the mountains to the level of the ocean. The money sytem had its laws of attraction and gravitation, of repulsion, of adhesion, and no man could indulge the hope of establishing a money system contrary to its own laws." On page 458 he said that "the government which