em is what we shall do when we aim to re-establish silver without
the co-operation of European powers, and really as an advance movement
to coerce them there into the same policy. Evidently the first dictate
of prudence is to coin such a dollar, as will not only do justice
among our citizens at home, but will prove a protection--an absolute
barricade--against the gold monometallists of Europe, who, whenever the
opportunity offers, will quickly draw from us the one hundred and sixty
millions of gold coin still in our midst. And if we coin a silver dollar
of full legal tender, obviously below the current value of the gold
dollar, we are opening wide our doors and inviting Europe to take our
gold. And with our gold flowing out from us we are forced to the single
silver standard and our relations with the leading commercial countries
of the world are at once embarrassed and crippled.

Third. The question before Congress then--sharply defined in the pending
House bill--is, whether it is now safe and expedient to offer free
coinage to the silver dollar of 412 1/2 grains, with the mints of the
Latin Union closed and Germany not permitting silver to be coined
as money. At current rates of silver, the free coinage of a dollar
containing 412 1/2 grains, worth in gold about ninety-two cents, gives
an illegitimate profit to the owner of the bullion, enabling him to take
ninety-two cents' worth of it to the mint and get it stamped as coin and
force his neighbor to take it for a full dollar. This is an undue and
unfair advantage which the Government has no right to give to the owner
of silver bullion, and which defrauds the man who is forced to take the
dollar. And it assuredly follows that if we give free coinage to this
dollar of inferior value and put it in circulation, we do so at the
expense of our better coinage in gold; and unless we expect the uniform
and invariable experience of other nations to be in some mysterious way
suspended for our peculiar benefit, we inevitably lose our gold coin.
It will flow out from us with the certainty and resistless force of the
tides. Gold has indeed remained with us in considerable amount during
the circulation of the inferior currency of the legal tender; but that
was because there were two great uses reserved by law for gold: the
collection of customs and the payment of interest on the public debt.
But if the inferior silver coin is also to be used for these two
reserved purposes, then gold