We have now outstanding more than $338,000,000 in silver certificates issued under existing laws.  They are serving the purpose of money usefully and without question.  Our gold reserve, amounting to only a little more than $100,000,000, is directly charged with the redemption of $346,000,000 of United States notes.  When it is proposed to inflate our silver currency it is a time for strengthening our gold reserve instead of depleting it.  I can not conceive of a longer step toward silver monometallism than we take when we spend our gold to buy silver certificates for circulation, especially in view of the practical difficulties surrounding the replenishment of our gold.

This leads me to earnestly present the desirability of granting to the Secretary of the Treasury a better power than now exists to issue bonds to protect our gold reserve when for any reason it should be necessary.  Our currency is in such a confused condition and our financial affairs are apt to assume at any time so critical a position that it seems to me such a course is dictated by ordinary prudence.

I am not insensible to the arguments in favor of coining the bullion seigniorage now in the Treasury, and I believe it could be done safely and with advantage if the Secretary of the Treasury had the power to issue bonds at a low rate of interest under authority in substitution of that now existing and better suited to the protection of the Treasury.

I hope a way will present itself in the near future for the adjustment of our monetary affairs in such a comprehensive and conservative manner as will accord to silver its proper place in our currency; but in the meantime I am extremely solicitous that whatever action we take on this subject may be such as to prevent loss and discouragement to our people at home and the destruction of confidence in our financial management abroad.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, August 7, 1894.

To the House of Representatives: 

I herewith return without approval House bill No. 2637, entitled “An act for the relief of Eugene Wells, late captain, Twelfth Infantry, and second lieutenant, First Artillery, United States Army.”

This bill authorizes the President to nominate and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint the beneficiary therein named a second lieutenant of artillery in the Army of the United States, and it directs that when so appointed he shall be placed upon the retired list on account of disability, thus dispensing with the usual examination and finding by a retiring board and all other ordinary prerequisites of retirement.

Appointments to the Army under the authority of special legislation which names the proposed appointee, and the purpose of which is the immediate retirement of the appointee, are open to serious objections, though I confess I have been persuaded through sympathy and sentiment on a number of occasions to approve such legislation.  When, however, it is proposed to make the retirement compulsory and without reference to age or previous examination, a most objectionable feature is introduced.