House bill--is, whether it is now safe and expedient to offer free
coinage to the silver dollar of 412 1/2 grains, with the mints of the
Latin Union closed and Germany not permitting silver to be coined
as money. At current rates of silver, the free coinage of a dollar
containing 412 1/2 grains, worth in gold about ninety-two cents, gives
an illegitimate profit to the owner of the bullion, enabling him to take
ninety-two cents' worth of it to the mint and get it stamped as coin and
force his neighbor to take it for a full dollar. This is an undue and
unfair advantage which the Government has no right to give to the owner
of silver bullion, and which defrauds the man who is forced to take the
dollar. And it assuredly follows that if we give free coinage to this
dollar of inferior value and put it in circulation, we do so at the
expense of our better coinage in gold; and unless we expect the uniform
and invariable experience of other nations to be in some mysterious way
suspended for our peculiar benefit, we inevitably lose our gold coin.
It will flow out from us with the certainty and resistless force of the
tides. Gold has indeed remained with us in considerable amount during
the circulation of the inferior currency of the legal tender; but that
was because there were two great uses reserved by law for gold: the
collection of customs and the payment of interest on the public debt.
But if the inferior silver coin is also to be used for these two
reserved purposes, then gold has no tie to bind it to us. What gain,
therefore, would we make for the circulating medium, if on opening the
gate for silver to flow in, we open a still wider gate for gold to flow
out? If I were to venture upon a dictum on the silver question, I would
declare that until Europe remonetizes we cannot afford to coin a dollar
as low as 412 1/2 grains. After Europe remonetizes on the old standard,
we cannot afford to coin a dollar above 400 grains. If we coin too low a
dollar before general re-monetization our gold will flow out from us. If
we coin too high a dollar after general remonetization our silver will