This simple bill was made the text of a long debate in the Senate that continued during the greater part of that session. The provision that "the trade dollar shall not hereafter be a legal tender" was transferred to the joint resolution already mentioned which became a law on the 22nd of July.
In my speech on Mr. Sargent's bill I said:
"This bill proposes to restore the old silver dollar, and with it and the subsidiary coins of the United States to redeem the United States notes and fractional currency. The dollar to be restored is the same dollar that had existed from 1792 to 1873; and the subsidiary coins to be issued are the same in form and value as have been issued since 1853. I have already stated in my remarks, made on the 11th of April last, the history of these silver coins and the relation of silver and gold to each other, not only in the United States, but in the countries with which we have the most extensive commercial relations.
"The two main questions are:
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"First. Shall silver coin be exchanged for United States notes as well as for fractional currency? And,
"Second. Is it wise to recoin the old silver dollar with a view to exchange it for United States notes?"
In this speech I favored the restoration of the silver dollar of the precise character and description of the dollar that existed from 1792 to 1873, but, as the market value of the silver in this dollar had greatly fallen, I insisted that the dollar should be coined from bullion purchased by the government at market price, so that the people of the United States would receive the difference between the cost of the bullion and the face value of the coin, the same principle that was adopted in what is known as the Bland- Allison act of 1878. I did not, however, propose the full legal tender quality that was given to the dollar by the act when adopted, but that it should be placed among the other silver coins, and be a legal tender only for twenty dollars.
The plan proposed by me was to set aside a portion of the surplus revenue or sinking fund of each year applicable to the payment of the public debt, for the purchase of silver bullion to be coined into silver dollars of the old standard. I said:
"The bill reported by the committee on finance thus provides for an immediate resumption of specie payments in silver coin, and thus completes the first and most difficult step of the problem. It neither disturbs nor deranges business, nor stirs up the phantom of contraction. It is in exact accordance with existing law, and leaves the silver coin, as now, a subsidiary coin, a legal tender only for limited amounts.