as will not only do justice among our citizens at home, but will prove a protection—­an absolute barricade—­against the gold monometallists of Europe, who, whenever the opportunity offers, will quickly draw from us the one hundred and sixty millions of gold coin still in our midst.  And if we coin a silver dollar of full legal tender, obviously below the current value of the gold dollar, we are opening wide our doors and inviting Europe to take our gold.  And with our gold flowing out from us we are forced to the single silver standard and our relations with the leading commercial countries of the world are at once embarrassed and crippled.

Third.  The question before Congress then—­sharply defined in the pending House bill—­is, whether it is now safe and expedient to offer free coinage to the silver dollar of 412 1/2 grains, with the mints of the Latin Union closed and Germany not permitting silver to be coined as money.  At current rates of silver, the free coinage of a dollar containing 412 1/2 grains, worth in gold about ninety-two cents, gives an illegitimate profit to the owner of the bullion, enabling him to take ninety-two cents’ worth of it to the mint and get it stamped as coin and force his neighbor to take it for a full dollar.  This is an undue and unfair advantage which the Government has no right to give to the owner of silver bullion, and which defrauds the man who is forced to take the dollar.  And it assuredly follows that if we give free coinage to this dollar of inferior value and put it in circulation, we do so at the expense of our better coinage in gold; and unless we expect the uniform and invariable experience of other nations to be in some mysterious way suspended for our peculiar benefit, we inevitably lose our gold coin.  It will flow out from us with the certainty and resistless force of the tides.  Gold has indeed remained with us in considerable amount during the circulation of the inferior currency of the legal tender; but that was because there were two great uses reserved by law for gold:  the collection of customs and the payment of interest on the public debt.  But if the inferior silver coin is also to be used for these two reserved purposes, then gold has no tie to bind it to us.  What gain, therefore, would we make for the circulating medium, if on opening the gate for silver to flow in, we open a still wider gate for gold to flow out?  If I were to venture upon a dictum on the silver question, I would declare that until Europe remonetizes we cannot afford to coin a dollar as low as 412 1/2 grains.  After Europe remonetizes on the old standard, we cannot afford to coin a dollar above 400 grains.  If we coin too low a dollar before general re-monetization our gold will flow out from us.  If we coin too high a dollar after general remonetization our silver will leave us.  It is only an equated value both before and after general remonetization that will preserve both gold and silver to us.

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