e aggregate wealth of the Republic
transcends the comparatively small limits of our bonded debt. And
remember that our aggregate wealth is always increasing, and our
bonded debt steadily growing less! If paid in a good silver dollar, the
bondholder has nothing to complain of. If paid in an inferior silver
dollar, he has the same grievance that will be uttered still more
plaintively by the holder of the legal-tender note and of the
national-bank bill, by the pensioner, by the day-laborer, and by the
countless host of the poor, whom we have with us always, and on whom
the most distressing effect of inferior money will be ultimately
precipitated.

But I must say, Mr. President, that the specific demand for the payment
of our bonds in gold coin and in nothing else, comes with an ill grace
from certain quarters. European criticism is levelled against us and
hard names are hurled at us across the ocean, for simply daring to state
that the letter of our law declares the bonds to be payable in standard
coin of July 14, 1870; expressly and explicitly declared so, and
declared so in the interest of the public creditor, and the declaration
inserted in the very body of the eight hundred million of bonds that
have been issued since that date. Beyond all doubt the silver dollar was
included in the standard coins of that public act. Payment at that time
would have been as acceptable and as undisputed in silver as in gold
dollars, for both were equally valuable in the European as well as in
the American market. Seven-eighths of all our bonds, owned out of the
country, are held in Germany and in Holland, and Germany has demonetized
silver and Holland has been forced thereby to suspend its coinage, since
the subjects of both powers purchased our securities. The German Empire,
the very year after we made our specific declaration for paying our
bonds in coin, passed a law destroying so far as lay in their power the
value of silver as money. I do not say that it was specially aimed at
this country, but it was passed regardless of its effect upon us, and
was followed, according to public and undenied statement, by a large
investment on the part of the German Government in our bonds, with a
view, it was understood, of holding them as a coin reserve for drawing
gold from us to aid in establishing their gold standard at home. Thus,
by one move the German Government destroyed, so far as lay in its power,
the then existing value of silver as mone