legislation, but it was passed over his veto, and I shall have no hesitancy in voting against its reënactment.

"The third proposition submitted is the free and unlimited coinage of silver upon a ratio of somewhere between 16 and 20 to 1. I have but a word to say in relation to this proposition. None of these ratios represents the commercial ratio. Coin your silver dollar in the ratio of 16 to 1 or 20 to 1 and you have a dollar intrinsically worth less than the gold dollar, and coin such a dollar as that—permit the owners of silver bullion to bring to the mints of the United States and have manufactured into dollars a certain number of grains, worth in bullion much less than when they are coined, is a proposition to which I cannot give my assent.

"But it has been stated in the course of this debate and repeatedly asserted that the present silver dollar is the 'dollar of the fathers.' That statement is not true. It is not the 'dollar of the fathers,' and the fathers if living would repudiate such an assumption as a reflection upon their integrity and sagacity. The silver dollar of the fathers was intended to be and was in fact exactly equal to the gold dollar in intrinsic value.

"When Hamilton and the men of his time were considering the establishment of the United States Mint, in 1792, the question presented was whether we

should coin silver or gold, or both, and having determined to utilize and coin both gold and silver, the only remaining question was just how much silver should be put in the silver dollar, and how much gold in the gold dollar. It was agreed on all hands there must be just such an amount put into the silver dollar and the gold dollar as would make them exactly equal in commercial value; for there was no man living at that time outside a mad house who entertained the idea that you could coin dollars of unequal intrinsic value and make them circulate side by side in any monetary system. For it is a law as old as monetary science, and as inexorable as the moving of the spheres, that if you have two dollars of unequal value the cheaper will be the only one that will circulate, and the more valuable will be driven out of circulation.

"Mr. Baring said upon this subject: 'A very slight difference of one-tenth or one-quarter of one per cent. would determine the use of one metal or the other.' Our own history demonstrates the truth of this law. Under the ratio of 1 to 15, established in 1792, the two coins separated in a few years, because it was found that the commercial value and the monetary value did not correspond, and gold went out of circulation, and our coined silver was the only money remaining in circulation. In 1834 the ratio was changed to 16 to 1, but it was soon discovered that

the commercial ratio did not then correspond with the monetary ratio, and the result was that silver was more valuable than gold, and went out of circulation, while gold became our only circulating metallic money. When the owner of 3714 grains of pure silver could get more for that silver uncoined than he could by having it coined into a silver dollar, certainly he would not take it to the Mint of the United States to have its value lessened by being coined into money. So silver dollars went out of circulation.

"In 1861 we were flooded with a depreciated paper currency less valuable than either gold or silver, and the result was that it drove both gold and silver out of circulation, and they remained out of circulation until we resumed specie payments in 1879.

"This people have not forgotten the battle for the resumption of specie payments, and they do not care to repeat that experience. It was a long journey, fraught with hardship and disaster to many individuals, and had to be pursued in the face not only of Democratic opposition demanding the repeal of the Resumption Act and the continued non-payment of our unredeemed promises, but Parties sprang up in favor of fiat money and the wildest financial vagaries which, for the time being, threatened the credit and financial integrity of this Nation. Must we fight that battle over again?