The proposition is openly and squarely made to pay the public debt at
our option in whichever metal, gold or silver, happens to be cheapest,
and chiefly for the reason that silver already happens to be at 10 per
cent. the cheapest. In 1873, to have paid the debt in silver would have
cost 3 per cent. more than to have paid it in gold, and then there was
no unwillingness on the part of the present non-contents to pay in gold.
Silver was worth more then to sell than to pay on debts. No one then
pulled out the hair of his head to cure grief for the disappearance of
the nominal silver option. Since that time it has been and would be now
cheaper nominally to pay in silver if we had it; and therefore we are
urged to repudiate our former action and to claim the power to resume an
option already once supposed to have been profitably exercised, of which
the world was called upon to take notice, and to pay in silver to-day
or to let it alone to-morrow. I know that the detestable doctrine of
Machiavelli was that "a prudent prince ought not to keep his word except
when he can do it without injury to himself;" but the Bible teaches a
different doctrine, and honoreth him "who sweareth to his own hurt and
changeth not." If we would not multiply examples of individual
financial turpitude, already painfully numerous, we must not trample out
conscience and sound morality from the monetary affairs of the nation.
The "option" about which we should be most solicitous was definitely
expressed by Washington when he said: "There is an option left to
the United States whether they will be respectable and prosperous or
contemptible and miserable as a nation." Our national self-respect would
not be increased when Turkey, as a debt-paying nation, shall be held
as our equal and Mexico as our superior. The credit of a great nation
cannot even be discussed without some loss; it cannot even be tempted
by the devious advantages of legal technicalities without bringing some
sense of shame; but to live, it must go, like chastity, unchallenged and