These fluctuations depend upon the law of supply and demand, involving
facts too numerous to state, but rarely depending on the volume of money
in circulation. An increase of currency can have no effect to advance
prices unless we cheapen and degrade it by making it less valuable; and
if that is the intention now, the direct and honest way is to put
fewer grains of gold or silver in our dollar. This was the old way, by
clipping the coin, adding base metal.

If we want a cheaper dollar we have the clear constitutional right to put
in it 15 grains of gold instead of 23, or 300 grains of silver instead
of 412 1/2, but you have no power to say how many bushels of wheat the
new dollar shall buy. You can, if you choose, cheapen the dollar under
your power to coin money, and thus enable a debtor to pay his debts with
fewer grains of silver or gold, under the pretext that gold or silver
has risen in value, but in this way you would destroy all forms of
credit and make it impossible for nations or individuals to borrow money
for a period of time. It is a species of repudiation.

The best standard of value is one that measures for the longest period
its equivalent in other products. Its relative value may vary from time
to time. If it falls, the creditor loses; if it increases, the debtor
loses; and these changes are the chances of all trade and commerce and
all loaning and borrowing. The duty of the Government is performed when
it coins money and provides convenient credit representatives of
coin. The purchasing power of money for other commodities depends upon
changing conditions over which the Government has no control. Even its
power to issue paper money has been denied until recently, but this may
be considered as settled by the recent decisions of the Supreme Court
in the legal-tender cases. All that Congress ought to do is to provide