orted to increase the financial strength of foreign nations. The
excess of exports of gold over its imports for the year ending June 30,
1893, amounted to more than $87,500,000.

Between the 1st day of July, 1890, and the 15th day of July, 1893, the
gold coin and bullion in our Treasury decreased more than $132,000,000,
while during the same period the silver coin and bullion in the Treasury
increased more than $147,000,000. Unless Government bonds are to be
constantly issued and sold to replenish our exhausted gold, only to be
again exhausted, it is apparent that the operation of the
silver-purchase law now in force leads in the direction of the entire
substitution of silver for the gold in the Government Treasury, and that
this must be followed by the payment of all Government obligations in
depreciated silver.

At this stage gold and silver must part company and the Government must
fail in its established policy to maintain the two metals on a parity
with each other. Given over to the exclusive use of a currency greatly
depreciated according to the standard of the commercial world, we could
no longer claim a place among nations of the first class, nor could our
Government claim a performance of its obligation, so far as such an
obligation has been imposed upon it, to provide for the use of the
people the best and safest money.

If, as many of its friends claim, silver ought to occupy a larger
place in our currency and the currency of the world through general
international cooperation and agreement, it is obvious that the United
States will not be in a position to gain a hearing in favor of such an
arrangement so long as we are willing to continue our attempt to
accomplish the result single-handed.

The knowledge in business circles among our own people that our
Government can not make its fiat equivalent to intrinsic value nor keep
inferior money on a parity with superior money by its own independent
efforts has resulted in such a lack of confidence at home in the
stability of currency values that capital refuses its aid to new
enterprises, while millions are actually withdrawn from the channels of
trade and commerce to become idle and unproductive in the hands of timid
owners. Foreign investors, equally alert, not only decline to purchase
American securities, but make haste to sacrifice those which they
already have.

It does not meet the situation to say that apprehension in regard to the
future of our finan