Second.  What power, then, has Congress over gold and silver?  It has the exclusive power to coin them; the exclusive power to regulate their value; very great, very wise, very necessary powers, for the discreet exercise of which a critical occasion has now arisen.  However men may differ about causes and processes, all will admit that within a few years a great disturbance has taken place in the relative values of gold and silver, and that silver is worth less or gold is worth more in the money markets of the world in 1878 than in 1873, when the further coinage of silver dollars was prohibited in this country.  To remonetize it now as though the facts and circumstances of that day were surrounding us, is to wilfully and blindly deceive ourselves.  If our demonetization were the only cause for the decline in the value of silver, then remonetization would be its proper and effectual cure.  But other causes, quite beyond our control, have been far more potentially operative than the simple fact of Congress prohibiting its further coinage; and as legislators we are bound to take cognizance of these causes.  The demonetization of silver in the great German Empire and the consequent partial, or well-nigh complete, suspension of coinage in the governments of the Latin Union, have been the leading dominant causes for the rapid decline in the value of silver.  I do not think the over-supply of silver has had, in comparison with these other causes, an appreciable influence in the decline of its value, because its over-supply with respect to gold in these later years, has not been nearly so great as was the over-supply of gold with respect to silver for many years after the mines of California and Australia were opened; and the over-supply of gold from those rich sources did not effect the relative positions and uses of the two metals in any European country.

I believe then if Germany were to remonetize silver and the kingdoms and states of the Latin Union were to reopen their mints, silver would at once resume its former relation with gold.  The European countries when driven to full re-monetization, as I believe they will be, must of necessity adopt their old ratio of fifteen and a half of silver to one of gold, and we shall then be compelled to adopt the same ratio instead of our former sixteen to one.  For if we fail to do this we shall, as before, lose our silver, which like all things else seeks the highest market; and if fifteen and a half pounds of silver will buy as much gold in Europe as sixteen pounds will buy in America, the silver, of course, will go to Europe.  But our line of policy in a joint movement with other nations to remonetize is very simple and very direct.  The difficult problem is what we shall do when we aim to re-establish silver without the co-operation of European powers, and really as an advance movement to coerce them there into the same policy.  Evidently the first dictate of prudence is to coin such a dollar,