so pledges
its faith to make provision, at the earliest practicable period,
for the redemption of United States notes in coin;' and the committee
on finance is directed to report to the Senate, at as early a day
as practicable, such measures as will not only redeem the pledge
of the public faith, but will also furnish a currency of uniform
value, always redeemable in gold or its equivalent, and so adjusted
as to meet the changing wants of trade and commerce."

Mr. Ferry, of Michigan, a member of the committee, offered the
following substitute for the pending resolution:

"That the committee on finance is directed to report to the Senate,
at as early a day as practicable, such measures as will restore
commercial confidence and give stability and elasticity to the
circulating medium through a moderate increase of currency."

Upon these adverse propositions a long debate followed without
practical results. I made a long speech on the 16th day of January,
1874, in favor of the resolution of the committee. I then said:

"At the outset of my remarks I wish to state some general propositions
established by experience, and the concurring opinions of all
writers on political economy. They may not be disputed, but are
constantly overlooked. They ought to be ever present in this
discussion as axioms, the truth of which has been so often proven
that proof is no longer requisite.

"The most obvious of these axioms, which lies at the foundation of
the argument I wish to make to-day, is that a specie standard is
the best and the only true standard of all values, recognized as
such by all civilized nations of our generation, and established
as such by the experience of all commercial nations that have
existed from the earliest period of recorded time. While the United
States, as well as all other nations, have for a time, under the
pressure of war or other calamity, been driven to establish other
standards of value, yet they have all been impelled to return to
the true standard; and even while other standards of value have
been legalized for the time, specie has measured their value as it
now measures the value of our legal tender notes.

"This axiom is as immutable as the law of gravitation or the laws
of the planetary system, and every device to evade it or avoid it
has, by its failure, only demonstrated the universal law that specie
measures all values as certainly as the surface of the ocean measures
the level of the e