tes in active circulation. Sixteen ounces
of silver bullion may not be worth one ounce of gold, still one dollar's
worth of silver bullion is worth one dollar of gold.

What will be the effect of the free coinage of silver? It is said that
it will at once advance silver to par with gold at the ratio of 16 to
1. I deny it. The attempt will bring us to the single standard of the
cheaper metal. When we advertise that we will buy all the silver of the
world at that ratio and pay in Treasury notes, our notes will have the
precise value of 371 1/2 grains of pure silver, but the silver will have
no higher value in the markets of the world. If, now, that amount of
silver can be purchased at 80 cents, then gold will be worth $1.25 in
the new standard. All labor, property, and commodities will advance in
nominal value, but their purchasing power in other commodities will not
increase. If you make the yard 30 inches long instead of 36 you must
purchase more yards for a coat or a dress, but do not lessen the cost
of the coat or the dress. You may by free coinage, by a species of
confiscation, reduce the burden of a debt, but you cannot change the
relative value of gold or silver, or any object of human desire. The
only result is to demonetize gold and to cause it to be hoarded or
exported. The cheaper metal fills the channels of circulation and the
dearer metal commands a premium.

If experience is needed to prove so plain an axiom we have it in our own
history. At the beginning of our National Government we fixed the value
of gold and silver as 1 to 15. Gold was undervalued and fled the country
to where an ounce of gold was worth 151 ounces of silver. Congress, in
1834, endeavored to rectify this by making the ratio 1 to 16, but by
this silver was undervalued. Sixteen ounces of silver were worth more
than 1 ounce of gold, and silver disappeared. Congress, in 1853, adopted
another expedient to secure the value of both metals as money. By
this expedient gold is the standard and silver the subsidiary coin,
containing confessedly silver of less value in the market than the gold
coin, but maintained at the parity of gold coin by the Government.

* * * * *

But it is said that those of us who demand the gold standard, or
paper money always equal to gold, are the representatives of capital,
money-changers, bondholders, Shylocks, who want to grind and oppress the
people. This kind of argument I hoped would never fi