"I want the standard gold, and no paper money not redeemable in gold; no paper money the value of which is not ascertained; no paper money that will organize a gold board to speculate in it."
Again, only a few days after this, on the 20th of February, when he was speaking in favor of the resolution, instructing the committee on finance to report a bill providing for the convertibility of treasury notes into gold coin of five per cent. bonds, he said:
"By this process we shall come to a specie basis, and when the laboring man receives a dollar it will have the purchasing power of a dollar, and he will not be called upon to do what is impossible for him or the producing classes to do, figure upon the exchanges, figure upon the fluctuations, figure upon the gambling in New York; but he will know what his money is worth. Gold is the universal standard of the world. Everybody knows what a dollar in gold is worth."
To review the history of the act of 1873: It was framed in the treasury department after a thorough examination by experts, transmitted to both Houses of Congress, thoroughly examined and debated during four consecutive sessions, with information called for by the House of Representatives, printed thirteen times by order and broadly circulated, and many amendments were proposed, but no material changes were made in the coinage clause from the beginning to the end of the controversy. It added the French dollar for a time, but that was superseded by the trade dollar, and neither was made a legal tender but for five dollars. It passed the Senate on the 10th of January, 1871—36 yeas and 14 nays—every Senator from the Pacific coast voting for it.
It was introduced in the House of Representatives by Mr. Kelley, at the next session. It was debated, scrutinized, and passed unanimously, dropping the silver dollar, as directly stated by Mr. Hooper. It was reported, debated, amended, and passed by the Senate unanimously. In every stage of the bill, and every print, the dollar of 412½ grains was prohibited, and the single gold standard recognized, proclaimed, and understood. It was not until silver was a cheaper dollar that anyone demanded it, and then it was to take advantage of a creditor.
It has always been within the power of Congress to correct this error, if error was made; but Congress has refused over and over again to do it. When the controversy arose, in 1878, on the Bland bill, and the House of Representatives proposed the free coinage of silver, the Senate rejected it after a deliberate contest, and substituted in place of it what is called the Bland-Allison act, which required the purchase, by the government, of silver bullion at its market value, and its coinage to a limited amount. Every effort has been made, from that time to this, to have the Congress of the United States pass a free coinage act.
If this is done, it will be to secure a cheaper dollar of less purchasing power, with the view to enable debtors to pay debts, contracted on the basis of gold coin, with silver coins, worth, with free coinage, less than one-half of gold coins.
In reviewing, at this distance of time, the legislation of 1873, in respect to the coinage of silver, I am of the opinion that it was fortunate that the United States then dropped the coinage of the old silver dollar. No one then contemplated the enormous yield of silver from the mines, and the resulting fall in the market value of silver, but, acting upon the experience of the past, that a parity between silver and gold could not be maintained at any fixed value, Congress adopted gold as the standard of value, and coined silver as a subsidiary coin, to be received and maintained at a parity with gold, but only a legal tender for small sums. This was the principle adopted in the act of 1853, when silver was more valuable than gold at the legal ratio. Silver was not then coined into dollars, because it was then worth more as bullion than as coin. It was needed for change, and, under the law of 1853, it was furnished in abundance. Similar laws are now in force in all countries where gold is the sole standard. Under these laws, a larger amount of silver is employed as subsidiary coins than when the coinage of silver was free.
The same condition of coinage now exists in the United States. While silver is reduced in market value nearly one-half, silver coins are maintained at par with gold at the old ratio, by fiat of the government. It is true that the purchase of silver, under recent laws, involved a heavy loss to the government, but the free coinage of silver, under the ratio of sixteen to one, would exclude gold from our currency, detach the United States from the monetary standard of all the chief commercial nations of the world, and change all existing contracts between individuals and with the government. In view of these results, certain to come from the free coinage of silver, I am convinced that until some international arrangement can be made, the present system of coinage should continue in force. This has now became a political, or, rather a monetary question, to be decided sooner or later, by popular opinion, at the polls. This subject will be further discussed at a later period, when efforts were made to adopt the free coinage of silver at the old ratio.
Prior to the meeting of Congress in December, 1870, a controversy had arisen between Senator Sumner and Secretary Fish, which created serious embarrassment, and I think had a very injurious influence during that and succeeding sessions of Congress. Mr. Sumner had long been chairman of the committee on foreign relations, and no doubt exercised a domineering power in this branch of the public service. Mr. Fish and Mr. Sumner had differed widely in respect to the annexation of San Domingo and certain diplomatic appointments and former treaties, among them the highly important English negotiations for the settlement of claims growing out of the war. On these topics the President and Mr. Sumner could not agree. Mr. Sumner insisted that the hasty proclamation by Great Britain of neutrality between the United States and the Southern Confederacy was the gravamen of the Alabama claims. The President and Mr. Fish contended that this proclamation was an act of which we could not complain, except as an indication of an unfriendly spirit by Great Britain, and that the true basis of the Alabama claims was that Great Britain, after proclaiming neutrality, did not enforce it, but allowed her subjects to build cruisers, and man, arm and use them, under cover of the rebel flag, to the destruction of our commercial navy.