he silversmiths were
honest enough to admit the cause of their opposition (Acts xix. 24, 28),
but these fellows are not. The Ephesians got up a riot; these fellows get
up panics. "Have ye not read that when the devil goeth out of a man then
it teareth him?"

=But are not bankers and other men who handle money as a business better
qualified than other people to judge of the proper metal?=

Certainly not. On the contrary, they are for many reasons much less
competent, as experience has repeatedly shown. All students of social
science know, indeed all close observers know, that those who do the
routine work in any vocation seldom form comprehensive views of it, and
those who manage the details of a business are very rarely indeed able to
master the higher philosophy thereof. This is a general truth applicable
to all vocations except those, like law, in which a mastery of the science
is a necessity for conducting the details. Experts in details often make
the worst blunders in general management. Nearly all the inventions of
perpetual motion come from practical mechanics. Nearly all the crazy
designs in motors come from engineers. The educational schemes of truly
colossal absurdity come mostly from teachers; all the quack nostrums and
elixirs to "restore lost manhood" are invented by doctors, and nearly all
the crazy religions are started by preachers.

On the other hand, three-fourths of the great inventions have been by men
who did not work at the business they improved. The world's great
financiers have not been bankers. Alexander Hamilton was not a banker.
Neither was Albert Gallatin, nor Robert J. Walker, nor James Guthrie, nor
Salmon P. Chase. William Patterson, who founded the Bank of England, was a
sailor and trader; and of the British Chancellors of the Exchequer whose
names shine in history, scarcely one was a banker. One of Christ's
disciples was a banker, and the end of his scientific financiering is
reported in Acts i. 18. John Law also, whose very name is a synonym for
foolish financial schemes, was a banker, and a very successful one. Where
was there ever a crazier scheme than the so-called "Baltimore Plan,"
exclusively the work of bankers?

=But as the bankers and great capitalists have no faith in it, the free
coinage of silver would certainly precipitate a panic.=

The gold basis has already precipitated several panics. Even in so
conservative a country as England they have, since adopting monometa