No approach to a bimetallic currency of uniform and fixed value can be possible, as it appears to me, without the co-operation of the leading commercial nations.  Even with that co-operation its accomplishment and permanence may not be absolutely certain, unless the late transcendent fickleness of the supply and demand subsides, or unless the ratio of value can be adjusted with more consummate accuracy than has hitherto been found by any single nation to be practicable.  One-tenth of one per cent. difference will always exclude from use one or the other metal; but here a difference nearly one hundred times greater has been proposed.  The double-standard nations and the differing single gold- or silver-standard nations doubtless contributed something to the relative equalization of values so long as they furnished an available market for any surplus of either metal, but this they are doing no longer.  Silver, though not yet universally demonetized, is thrown upon the market in such masses and from so many prolific sources as to be governed by the inexorable laws of demand and supply.  Its magic as coin, if it has not hopelessly departed, has been, like the retreating soldier, fearfully “demoralized,” and is passing to the rear.

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It cannot be for the interest or the honor of the United States, while possessed of any healthy national pride, to resort to any expedient of bankrupt governments to lower the money standard of the country.  That standard should keep us “four square” to the world and give us equal rank in the advanced civilization and industrial enterprise of all the great commercial nations.

I have failed of my purpose if I have not shown that there has been so large an increase of the stock of silver as of itself to effect a positive reduction of its value; and that this result has been confirmed and made irreversible by the new and extensive European disuse of silver coinage.  I have indicated the advisability of obtaining the co-operation of other leading nations, in fixing upon a common ratio of value between gold and silver, before embarking upon a course of independent action from which there could be no retreat.  I have also attempted to show that, even in the lowest pecuniary sense of profit, the Government of the United States could not be the gainer by proposing to pay either the public debt or the United States notes in silver; that such a payment would violate public pledges as to the whole, and violates existing statutes as to all that part of the debt contracted since 1870, and for which gold has been received; that the remonetization of silver means the banishment of gold and our degradation among nations to the second or third rank; that it would be a sweeping 10 per cent. reduction of all duties upon imports, requiring the imposition of new taxes to that extent; that it would prevent the further funding of the public debt at a lower rate of interest and give to the present holders