payments in January, 1879. Nobody wants to go back to the old
condition of things when it was gold to the bondholders and paper
to the pensioners. When the outstanding government bonds were
fifteen hundred millions, and banks could issue paper money upon
the deposit of bonds, the volume of currency could expand upon the
increase of business. But that condition is passing away. The
bonds are being paid, and the time is coming, and has come, when
the amount of bonds is so reduced and their value is so increased
that banks cannot afford to buy bonds upon which to issue circulating
notes.

"We must contemplate the time when the national banks will not
issue their notes, but become banks of discount and deposit. The
banks are evidently acting upon this theory, for they have voluntarily
largely reduced their circulation. How shall this currency be
replaced? Certainly not by the notes of state banks. No notes
should circulate as money except such as have the sanction, authority
and guarantee of the United States. The best for of these is
certificates based upon gold and silver of value equal to the notes
outstanding. Nor should any distinction be made between gold and
silver. Both should be received at their market value in the
markets of the world. Their relative value varies from day to day
and there is no power strong enough to establish a fixed ratio of
value except the concurrence of the chief commercial nations of
the world. We coin both metals at a fixed ratio, but we maintain
them at par with each other by limiting the amount of the cheaper
metal to the sum needed for subsidiary coin and receiving and
redeeming it.

"The demand for the free coinage of silver without limit, is a
demand that the people of the United States shall pay for silver
bullion more than its market price; a demand that is not and ought
not to be made by the producer of any commodity. There is no
justice or equity in it. If granted by the United States alone it
will demonetize gold and derange all the business transactions of
our people. What we ought to do, and what we now do under the
silver law of the last Congress, a conservative Republican measure,
is to buy the entire product of silver mined in the United States
at its market value, and, upon the security of that silver deposited
in the treasury, issue treasury notes to the full amount of the
cost of the bullion. In this way we add annually to our national
currency circu