ented for redemption.
The silver dollars could only be used in the redemption of certificates
or by issue in payment of current liabilities. With the utmost
exertions to put the silver dollars in circulation only fifty
million could be used in this way. To have forced more into
circulation would have excited a doubt whether any of our paper
money could be maintained at par with gold.

When urged to express a remedy for this condition I said that if
I had the power to dictate a law I would ascertain by the best
means the exact market value of the two metals, and then put into
each silver dollar as many grains of standard silver as would be
equal in market value to 25.8 grains of standard gold. I said that
if the price of silver fell the coin would still circulate upon
the fiat of the government. If silver advanced in relative value
the amount of silver in the coin could, at stated periods, be
decreased. Bimetallism could only exist where the market value of
the two metals approached the coinage value, or where a strong
government, with a good credit, received and paid out coins of each
metal at parity with each other. The only way to prevent a variation
in the value of the two metals, and the exportation of the dearer
metal, would be, by an international agreement between commercial
nations, to adopt a common ratio somewhat similar in substance to
that of the Latin Union, each nation to receive as current money
the coins of the other and each to redeem its own coins in gold.

Mr. Beck replied to my argument, and the debate between us continued
during two or three days. The weakness of the silver advocates
was that they were not content with the coinage of more silver coin
than ever before, but were determined that the holder of silver in
any form might deposit it in the mint and have it coined into
dollars for his benefit at the ratio of sixteen to one, when its
market value had then fallen so that twenty ounces of silver were
worth but one ounce in gold, and since has fallen in value so that
thirty ounces of silver are worth but one ounce in gold.

With free coinage in these conditions no gold coins would be minted
and all the money of the United States would be reduced in value
to the sole silver standard, and gold would be hoarded and exported.
This debate has been continued from that date to this, not only in
Congress, but in every schoolhouse in the United States, and in
all the commercial nations of the