arth.

"It is idle for us to try to discuss with intelligence the currency
question until we are impressed with the truth, the universality,
and the immutability, of this axiom. Many of the crude ideas now
advanced spring from ignoring it. The most ingenious sophistries
are answered by it. It is the governing principle of finance. It
is proved by experience, is stated clearly by every leading writer
on political economy, and is now here, in our own country, proving
its truth by measuring daily the value of our currency and of all
we have or produce. I might, to establish this axiom, repeat the
history of finance, from the shekels of silver, 'current money with
the merchant,' paid by Abraham, to the last sale of stock in New
York. I might quote Aristotle and Pliny, as well as all the writers
on political economy of our own time, and trace the failure of the
innumerable efforts to establish some other standard of value, from
the oxen that measured the value of the armor of Homeric heroes to
the beautifully engraved promise of our day; but this would only
be the hundred-times-told tale which every student may find recorded,
not only in schoolbooks, but in the writings of Humboldt, Chevalier,
Adam Smith, and others of the most advanced scientific authorities.
They all recognize the precious metals as the universal standard
of value. Neither governments, nor parliaments, nor congresses
can change this law. It defies every form of authority, but silently
and surely asserts itself as a law of necessity, beyond the
jurisdiction of municipal law.

* * * * *

"Of late years much difficulty has grown out of the slightly varying
value of silver and gold, as compared with each other, and the
tendency of opinion has been to adopt gold alone as the standard
of value. The United States has twice changed the relative value
of these metals, and other modern nations have been driven to
similar expedients. At the Paris monetary conference, held in
1867, which I had the honor to attend, the delegates of twenty
nations represented agreed to recommend gold alone as the standard
of value. The United States, and nearly all the commercial nations,
have adopted this standard, and reduced the use of silver to a mere
token coinage of less intrinsic value than gold, but maintained at
par with gold by the right to be converted into gold at the will
of the holder. So that for all practical purposes we may regard
gold as the only true