prudent prince ought not to keep his word except when he can do it without injury to himself;” but the Bible teaches a different doctrine, and honoreth him “who sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not.”  If we would not multiply examples of individual financial turpitude, already painfully numerous, we must not trample out conscience and sound morality from the monetary affairs of the nation.  The “option” about which we should be most solicitous was definitely expressed by Washington when he said:  “There is an option left to the United States whether they will be respectable and prosperous or contemptible and miserable as a nation.”  Our national self-respect would not be increased when Turkey, as a debt-paying nation, shall be held as our equal and Mexico as our superior.  The credit of a great nation cannot even be discussed without some loss; it cannot even be tempted by the devious advantages of legal technicalities without bringing some sense of shame; but to live, it must go, like chastity, unchallenged and unsuspected.  It cannot take refuge behind the fig-leaves of the law, and especially not behind a law yet to be made to meet the case.

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The argument relied upon in favor of a bimetallic standard as against a monometallic seems to be that a single-metal standard leaves out one-half of the world’s resources; but the same thing must occur with a bimetallic standard unless the metals can be placed and kept in a state of exact equilibrium, or so that nothing can be gained by the exchange of one for the other.  Hitherto this has been an unattainable perfection.  A law fixing the ratio of 16 of silver to 1 of gold, as proposed by different members of the Commission, would now be a gross over-valuation of silver and wholly exclude gold from circulation.  It will hardly be disputed that the two metals cannot circulate together unless they are mutually convertible without profit or loss at the ratio fixed at the mint.  But it is here proposed to start silver with a large legal-tender advantage above its market value, and with the probability, through further depreciation, of increasing that advantage by which the monometallic standard of silver will be ordained and confirmed.  The argument in behalf of a double standard is double-tongued, when in fact nothing is intended, or can be the outcome, but a single silver standard.  The argument would wed silver and gold, but the conditions which follow amount to a decree of perpetual divorcement.  Enforce the measure by legislation, and gold would at once flee out of the country.  Like liberty, gold never stays where it is undervalued.