What will be the effect of the free coinage of silver?  It is said that it will at once advance silver to par with gold at the ratio of 16 to 1.  I deny it.  The attempt will bring us to the single standard of the cheaper metal.  When we advertise that we will buy all the silver of the world at that ratio and pay in Treasury notes, our notes will have the precise value of 371 1/2 grains of pure silver, but the silver will have no higher value in the markets of the world.  If, now, that amount of silver can be purchased at 80 cents, then gold will be worth $1.25 in the new standard.  All labor, property, and commodities will advance in nominal value, but their purchasing power in other commodities will not increase.  If you make the yard 30 inches long instead of 36 you must purchase more yards for a coat or a dress, but do not lessen the cost of the coat or the dress.  You may by free coinage, by a species of confiscation, reduce the burden of a debt, but you cannot change the relative value of gold or silver, or any object of human desire.  The only result is to demonetize gold and to cause it to be hoarded or exported.  The cheaper metal fills the channels of circulation and the dearer metal commands a premium.

If experience is needed to prove so plain an axiom we have it in our own history.  At the beginning of our National Government we fixed the value of gold and silver as 1 to 15.  Gold was undervalued and fled the country to where an ounce of gold was worth 151 ounces of silver.  Congress, in 1834, endeavored to rectify this by making the ratio 1 to 16, but by this silver was undervalued.  Sixteen ounces of silver were worth more than 1 ounce of gold, and silver disappeared.  Congress, in 1853, adopted another expedient to secure the value of both metals as money.  By this expedient gold is the standard and silver the subsidiary coin, containing confessedly silver of less value in the market than the gold coin, but maintained at the parity of gold coin by the Government.

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But it is said that those of us who demand the gold standard, or paper money always equal to gold, are the representatives of capital, money-changers, bondholders, Shylocks, who want to grind and oppress the people.  This kind of argument I hoped would never find its way into the Senate Chamber.  It is the cry of the demagogue, without the slightest foundation.  All these classes can take care of themselves.  They are the men who make their profits out of the depreciation of money.  They can mark up the price of their property to meet changing standards.  They can protect themselves by gold contracts.  In proportion to their wealth they have less money on hand than any other class.  They have already protected themselves to a great extent by converting the great body of the securities in which they deal into gold bonds, and they hold the gold of the country, which you cannot change in value.  They are not, as a rule, the creditors of the country.