with the merchant." Since that
time nations have risen and fallen, races have disappeared, dialects
and languages have been forgotten, arts have been lost, treasures have
perished, continents have been discovered, islands have been sunk in the
sea, and through all these ages and through all these changes, silver
and gold have reigned supreme, as the representatives of value, as the
media of exchange. The dethronement of each has been attempted in turn,
and sometimes the dethronement of both; but always in vain. And we are
here to-day, deliberating anew over the problem which comes down to us
from Abraham's time: the weight of the silver that shall be "current
money with the merchant."

JOHN SHERMAN,

OF OHIO. (BORN 1823.)

ON SILVER COINAGE AND TREASURY NOTES;

UNITED STATES SENATE, JUNE 5, 1890.

I approach the discussion of this bill and the kindred bills and
amendments pending in the two Houses with unaffected diffidence. No
problem is submitted to us of equal importance and difficulty. Our
action will affect the value of all the property of the people of the
United States, and the wages of labor of every kind, and our trade and
commerce with all the world. In the consideration of such a question
we should not be controlled by previous opinions or bound by local
interests, but with the lights of experience and full knowledge of all
the complicated facts involved, give to the subject the best judgment
which imperfect human nature allows. With the wide diversity of opinion
that prevails, each of us must make concessions in order to secure such
a measure as will accomplish the objects sought for without impairing
the public credit or the general interests of our people. This is no
time for visionary theories of political economy. We must deal with
facts as we find them and not as we wish them. We must aim at results
based upon practical experience, for what has been probably will be. The
best prophet of the future is the past.

To know what measures ought to be adopted we should have a clear
conception of what we wish to accomplish. I believe a majority of
the Senate desire, first, to provide an increase of money to meet the
increasing wants of our rapidly growing country and population, and
to supply the reduction in our circulation caused by the retiring of
national-bank notes; second, to increase the market value of silver not
only in the United States but in the world, in the belief that this is
ess