Georgia, one of the ablest of the Democratic
leaders. After I had stated my doctrine in a brief speech
in the Senate one day, he crossed the chamber and said to
me that, while he did not accept it, he thought I had made
the ablest and most powerful statement of it he had ever heard
or read. The other came from Charles Emory Smith, afterward
a member of President McKinley's Cabinet and editor of the
_Press,_ a leading paper in Philadelphia. I have his letter
in which he says that he think an edition of at least a million
copies of my speech on gold and silver should be published
and circulated through the country. He also said, in an article
in the _Saturday Evening Post,_ June 14, 1902:

"In the great contest over the repeal of the Silver Purchase
Act he made the most luminous exposition, both of what had
been done, and the reasons for it; and what ought to be done,
and the grounds for it, that was heard in the Senate."

It occurred to me that I could render a very great service
to my country, during my absence, if I could be instrumental
in getting a declaration from England and France that those
countries would join with the United States in an attempt
to reestablish silver as a legal tender.

It was well known that Mr. Balfour, Leader of the Administration
in the House of Commons, was an earnest bimetallist. He had
so declared himself in public, both in the House and elsewhere,
more than once.

There had been a resolution, not long before, signed by more
than two thirds of the French Chamber of Deputies, declaring
that France was ready to take a similar action whenever England
would move. I, accordingly, with the intervention of Mr.
Frewen, the English friend I have just mentioned, arranged
an interview with Mr. Balfour in Downing Street. We had a
very pleasant conversation indeed. I told him that if he
were willing, in case the United States, with France and Germany
and some of the smaller nations, would establish a common
standard for gold and silver, to declare that the step would
have the approval of England, and that, although she would
maintain the gold standard alone for domestic purposes, she
would make a substantial and most important contribution to
the success of the joint undertaking, that it would insure
the defeat of the project for silver monometallism, from which
England, who was so largely our creditor, would suffer, in
the beginning almost as much as we would, and perhaps much
more,