In the report from which I have already quoted, Mr. Hamilton argues at length in favor of a double standard, and all the subsequent experience of well-nigh ninety years has brought out no clearer statement of the whole case nor developed a more complete comprehension of this subtle and difficult subject.  “On the whole,” says Mr. Hamilton, “it seems most advisable not to attach the unit exclusively to either of the metals, because this cannot be done effectually without destroying the office and character of one of them as money and reducing it to the situation of mere merchandise.”  And then Mr. Hamilton wisely concludes that this reduction of either of the metals to mere merchandise (I again quote his exact words) “would probably be a greater evil than occasional variations in the unit from the fluctuations in the relative value of the metals, especially if care be taken to regulate the proportion between them with an eye to their average commercial value.”  I do not think that this country, holding so vast a proportion of the world’s supply of silver in its mountains and its mines, can afford to reduce the metal to the “situation of mere merchandise.”  If silver ceases to be used as money in Europe and America, the great mines of the Pacific slope will be closed and dead.  Mining enterprises of the gigantic scale existing in this country cannot be carried on to provide backs for looking-glasses and to manufacture cream-pitchers and sugar-bowls.  A vast source of wealth to this entire country is destroyed the moment silver is permanently disused as money.  It is for us to check that tendency and bring the continent of Europe back to the full recognition of the value of the metal as a medium of exchange.

Seventh.  The question of beginning anew the coinage of silver dollars has aroused much discussion as to its effect on the public credit; and the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Matthews) placed this phase of the subject in the very forefront of the debate—­insisting, prematurely and illogically, I think, on a sort of judicial construction in advance, by concurrent resolution, of a certain law in case that law should happen to be passed by Congress.  My own view on this question can be stated very briefly.  I believe the public creditor can afford to be paid in any silver dollar that the United States can afford to coin and circulate.  We have forty thousand millions of property in this country, and a wise self-interest will not permit us to overturn its relations by seeking for an inferior dollar wherewith to settle the dues and demands of any creditor.  The question might be different from a merely selfish stand-point if, on paying the dollar to the public creditor, it would disappear after performing that function.  But the trouble is that the inferior dollar you pay the public creditor remains in circulation, to the exclusion of the better dollar.  That which you pay at home will stay there; that which you send abroad will come back.