that you should, for a long time, maintain a double standard. Gentlemen talk about a double standard of gold and silver as a thing that exists, and that we propose to change. We have had but a single standard for the last three or four years. That has been and is now, gold. We propose to let it remain so, and to adapt silver to it, and regulate it by it."*

From 1853 the laws relating to the coinage remained unchanged till 1873. In 1870, a communication, under date of April 25th, was addressed by Mr. Boutwell, then Secretary of the Treasury, to Mr. Sherman, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, inclosing a bill for the thorough revision of all the laws relating to the Mint. Accompanying the bill was a report, prepared by Mr. J. J. Knox, then DeputyController of the Currency, presenting the reasons for the various provisions in the bill, one of which was the discontinuance of the silver dollar as one of the coins, for the reason that, in consequence of its excess of bullion over its nominal value, it had long ceased to be one of the coins in circulation in the country. On the 28th of April, the bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Finance, and a large number of copies ordered to be printed, with wide margins, and distributed among experts and persons whose opinions were regarded of value, in order to elicit the widest comment and criticism. Numerous replies were received, the purport of all being embraced in that of Dr. Linderman, Director of the Mint. .. "It would be better, in my opinion," said Dr. Linderman, "to discontinue the issue of the silver dollar altogether (than to issue it at a reduced value, as a subsidiary coin). The gold dollar is really the legal unit and measure of value. Having a higher value as bullion than its nominal value, the silver dollar long ago ceased to be a coin of

*The silver dollar not only formed no part of the circulation from 1834, but it never, at any time, formed any considerable portion of it. Up to 1834 the whole number of silver dollars coined equaled only $1,439,517, the amount averaging only $45,000 yearly. From the formation of the Mint down to 1873, the total coinage of silver dollars equaled only $8,045,838, against $816,905,879 of gold, and $144,141,885 of smaller and subsidiary silver coins. From 1834 to 1873 the premium on silver dollars equaled, on an average, 2.25; the premium being the highest in 1859, when it rose to 5.22, and the lowest in 1843, when it fell to 0.34. In 1870, when the bill demonetizing silver was introduced, the premium stood at 2.67, and continued at about such rate till the bill passed.

circulation, and, being of no practical use whatever, its use should be discontinued."

On the 19th of December, 1870, the bill reported by the Senate committee was taken up for discussion, and on the 9th of January, 1871, was passed by the Senate substantially as originally reported. On the 13th of January, 1871, the bill having gone to the House, was ordered to be printed. On the 19th of February following, Mr. William D. Kelley, chairman of the Committee on Coinage of the House, reported the bill to that body, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute, which agreed with the Senate bill in discontinuing the coinage of the silver dollars. Mr. Kelley's bill was ordered to be printed and recommitted. On the 9th of March, 1871, Mr. Kelley again introduced the bill, which again was ordered to be printed, and again was referred to his committee. On the 9th of January, 1872, the bill was again reported, with a recommendation that it pass. On the 9th of April, 1872, it was taken up and discussed at great length. It was again taken up for discussion on the 27th of May, 1872, when an amendment was offered by Mr. Hooper, a member of the coinage committee, from Massachusetts, and adopted, that the silver dollar be retained as a subsidiary currency, its value being reduced to 384 grains, the ratio of metal in the subsidiary coins, for the reasons, as stated by him in the debate, that "the silver dollar of 412 grains, by reason of its bullion or intrinsic value being greater than its nominal value, long since ceased to be a coin of circulation, and is melted by manufacturers of silverware." Mr. Kelley, in the same debate, said: "It is impossible to retain the double standard. The value of gold and silver continually fluctuates. You cannot determine this year what will be the relative values of gold and silver next year. They were 15 to 1 a short time ago; they are 16 to 1 now. .. I again call the attention of the House to the fact that gentlemen who oppose this bill insist upon maintaining the silver dollar, worth three and a half cents more than the gold dollar, and worth seven cents more than two half-dollars. So long as these provisions remain, you cannot keep silver in the country."

The bill, as amended, passed the House on the 27th of May, 1872. It was returned to the Senate with the amendments, again printed, referred to the Committee on Finance, and reVOL. CXXVII.-NO. 263.

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ported back on the 16th of December, 1872. After debate it was again referred to the committee, and printed with the amendments. On the 7th of January, 1873, it was taken up for debate in the Senate, and finally passed by that body on the 17th of January, 1873, the House amendment to the bill, retaining the silver dollar as a subsidiary coin, having been stricken out. As the House adhered to its amendment, the bill went to a committee of conference, by which the House amendment was stricken out, the bill making no provision for the coinage of the silver dollar in any form. The report of the conference committee was accepted by both Houses, and on the 12th of February the famous bill of 1873, by the signature of the President, became a law.

It will thus be seen that nearly three years elapsed from the introduction of the proposition demonetizing the silver dollar till its final passage. During this whole period every possible means were resorted to to give it publicity, and to invite whatever opinion or criticism could aid in coming to a wise and temperate conclusion. It was during this whole time constantly and emphatically urged by the Secretary of the Treasury. The bill was repeatedly considered, at length, by the Finance Committee of the Senate and the coinage committee of the House, during five different sessions of Congress. It was repeatedly read in full in both Houses. It was printed in full, with the amendments, by order of Congress, eleven different times, and twice, in addition, in the reports made by the Deputy-Controller of the Currency. The debates upon the bill in the Senate occupy sixty-six columns of the Congressional Globe, and those in the House seventy-eight columns. During this period, every shade of opinion, both in and out of Congress, was invoked and challenged. Never was a measure more fully, intelligently, conscientiously, and exhaustively considered.

I have given a brief sketch of the coinage laws from the formation of the Government, in order to show that, as far as the two metals are concerned, all measures had one object-an equality of value between the two; that the act of 1853, which provided the conditions by which alone the coins of silver to be issued in the future were to be retained in the country, not the act of 1873, was the one that placed the nation on a mono-metallic

basis of gold; that the act of 1873 produced no change in the monetary condition of the country, and no change whatever, except to remove an obsolete provision from the statute-book. That this act was not devised by the rich as a cunning and cruel method of oppressing the poor, by increasing the amounts to be paid by them, is sufficiently shown by the fact that it substituted the lower standard in place of the higher. The measure, consequently, if it had any design of the kind, was conceived wholly in the interest of the poor against the rich. It had no other design than to adapt the currency to the convenience and wants of the country; the dropping out of the silver dollar being one of the least important of the measures to be accomplished.

In view of the preceding, I do not propose to controvert Mr. Bland's assertion that the act of 1873 was a scheme of robbery, whereby the East sought to make the South and West pay two dollars for one, nor that the rights of the masses of the North were "silenced and overborne by a subsidized press, a subsidized pulpit, a subsidized corps of college presidents, college professors, and literary hacks of high and low degree, who have no capacity for other species of thrift than that which follows fawning upon moneyed capital." I do not propose to enter into any controversy with him, as I have fully disqualified him from being an antagonist in any controversy whatever. A few weeks ago a witness in the city of New York, testifying in his own behalf, was, upon leaving the witness-stand, ordered into custody by the judge for falsehoods palpable from his own statement, uncontradicted by a single witness. The public, the tribunal with which Mr. Bland now rests his case, may not be able to restrain his liberty, but it will pronounce instant sentence against him as a willful falsifier of history, as a libeler of his kind, and as a conspirator against the order and welfare of society.

HENRY V. POOR.

VIII.

THE NATIVE ARMY OF INDIA.

A TELEGRAM, received some few weeks ago, informed us that 7,000 native troops had been ordered to embark at Bombay for employment in Europe. It startled those who were likely to become our active enemies, who had been under the impression that we should have had to increase our garrisons in India in the event of war, and it roused up Englishmen to a consciousness of military resources, long possessed, but never previously realized by the nation. Lord Beaconsfield was the first of our public men who reminded his countrymen that England was the greatest of all Asiatic powers, and, by this move of Indian troops to the Mediterranean, he has made them feel their great military strength. It has come upon them as a sort of revelation. It had been previously the fashion to regard our Indian Empire merely as a valuable possession that was more or less a source of weakness to us; as a distant province, to retain which we might at any moment have to exert all our strength; and that, whether threatened by internal rebellion or external aggression, might every now and then necessitate the dispatch of a large force from these shores to preserve or protect. No one seems to have thought of it as an integral portion of her Majesty's dominions capable and willing to assume its share of our burdens in time of war, or to contribute toward the defense of our world-extending interests in the event of those interests being attacked. Our ablest officers had studied and worked out the best policy to pursue should Russian aggression in Central Asia endanger the peace or security of our Afghan frontier. Plans without end-as numerous, doubtless, as those devised in Russia for the invasion of India-had been discussed by us for countering any such undertaking, all more or less requiring the coöperation of troops to be sent from