* * * * *

A stupid charge, heretofore, in the front of debate, has been made,
and wickedly repeated in many places, that the Coinage Act of 1873 was
secretly and clandestinely engineered through Congress without proper
consideration or knowledge of its contents; but it is to be noted that
this charge had its birth and growth years after the passage of the Act,
and not until after the fall of silver. Long ago it was declared by one
of the old Greek dramatists that, "No lie ever grows old." This one is
as fresh and boneless now as at its birth, and is therefore swallowed
with avidity by those to whom such food is nutritious or by those who
have no appetite for searching the documents and records for facts.
Whether the Act itself was right or wrong does not depend upon the
degradation of Congress implied in the original charge. Interested
outsiders may glory in libelling Congress, but why should its own
members? The Act may be good and Congress bad, and yet it is to be hoped
that the latter has not fallen to the level of its traducers. But there
has been no fall of Congress; only a fall of silver. To present the
abundant evidence showing that few laws were ever more openly proposed,
year after year, and squarely understood than the Coinage Act of 1873,
will require but a moment. It had been for years elaborately considered
and reported upon by the Deputy Comptroller of the Currency. The special
attention of Congress was called to the bill and the report by the
Secretary of the Treasury in his annual re-ports for 1870, 1871, and
1872, where the "new features" of the bill, "discontinuing the
coinage of the silver dollar," were fully set forth. The extensive
correspondence of the Department had been printed in relation to the
proposed bill, and widely circulated. The bill was separately printed
eleven times, and twice in reports of the Deputy Comptroller of the
Currency,--thirteen times in all,--and so printed by order of Congress.