ic
productions are cut off from the foreign market; for it is impossible
that with such a currency we can compete on equal terms with rival
nations, whose industry rests upon a specie standard. As we approach
such a standard, we are now able, as to a few articles, to compete
with foreign industry; but it is only as to articles in the
manufacture of which we have peculiar advantages. Let us rest our
industries on that standard, and soon we could compete in the
markets of the world in all the articles produced from iron, wood,
leather, and cotton, the raw basis of which are our national
productions. And it must be remembered that all the countries with
which we compete are specie-paying countries.

"A country that does not rest her industry upon specie is necessarily
excluded from the great manufacturing industries of modern
civilization, and is self-condemned to produce only the raw basis
for advanced industry. Cheap food, climate, soil, or natural
advantages, such as cheap land, vast plains for pasture, or rich
mines, may give to a country wealth and prosperity in spite of the
evils of depreciated paper money; but when we come in competition
with the world in the advanced grades of production which give
employment to the skilled mechanic, we must rest such industry upon
the gold basis, or we enter the lists like a knight with his armor
unbound.

"Again, sir, a depreciated and fluctuating currency is a premium
and bounty to the broker and money changer. Under his manipulation
our paper standard of value goes up and down, and he gambles and
speculates, with all the advantages in his favor. Good people look
on and think that it is gold that is going up and down; that their
money is a dollar still, and trade and traffic in that belief.
But the shrewd speculator calculates daily the depreciation of our
note, the shortening of the yard stick, the shrinkage of the acre,
the lessening of the ton, and thus it is that he daily adds to his
gains from the indifference or delusion of our people.

"Sir, it is an old story, often repeated in our day, and most
eloquently epitomized by Daniel Webster in the often-quoted passage
of his speech, in which he said:

'A disordered currency is one of the greatest of political evils.
It undermines the virtues necessary for the support of the social
system and encourages propensities destructive of its happiness.
It wars against industry, frugality, and economy; and it fosters
the e