At par with what? Everything in the universe is at par with itself. The volume of certificates issued by the government would be exactly the amount of the metal deposited, and that amount could never be suddenly increased or diminished, for the product of the mines in any one year is very seldom more than three per cent. of the stock already on hand, and half of that is used in the arts. It is self-evident, therefore, that such certificates would be many times more stable in value than any form of bank paper yet devised.
Gold would go out of circulation.
It has already gone out. Under the present policy of the government we have all the disadvantages of both systems and the advantages of neither, with the added element of chronic uncertainty and an artificial scare gotten up for political purposes.
And that very scare shows an important fact which you silverites ought to heed—that nearly all the bankers and heavy moneyed men are opposed to free coinage.
Nearly all the slaveholders were opposed to emancipation. All the landlords in Great Britain were opposed to the abolition of the Corn Laws, and all the silversmiths of Ephesus were violently opposed to the “agitation” started by St. Paul. And what of it? The silversmiths were honest enough to admit the cause of their opposition (Acts xix. 24, 28), but these fellows are not. The Ephesians got up a riot; these fellows get up panics. “Have ye not read that when the devil goeth out of a man then it teareth him?”
But are not bankers and other men who handle money as a business better qualified than other people to judge of the proper metal?
Certainly not. On the contrary, they are for many reasons much less competent, as experience has repeatedly shown. All students of social science know, indeed all close observers know, that those who do the routine work in any vocation seldom form comprehensive views of it, and those who manage the details of a business are very rarely indeed able to master the higher philosophy thereof. This is a general truth applicable to all vocations except those, like law, in which a mastery of the science is a necessity for conducting the details. Experts in details often make the worst blunders in general management. Nearly all the inventions of perpetual motion come from practical mechanics. Nearly all the crazy designs in motors come from engineers. The educational schemes of truly colossal absurdity come mostly from teachers; all the quack nostrums and elixirs to “restore lost manhood” are invented by doctors, and nearly all the crazy religions are started by preachers.
On the other hand, three-fourths of the great inventions have been by men who did not work at the business they improved. The world’s great financiers have not been bankers. Alexander Hamilton was not a banker. Neither was Albert Gallatin, nor Robert J. Walker, nor James Guthrie, nor Salmon P. Chase. William Patterson, who founded the Bank of England, was a sailor and trader; and of the British Chancellors of the Exchequer whose names shine in history, scarcely one was a banker. One of Christ’s disciples was a banker, and the end of his scientific financiering is reported in Acts i. 18. John Law also, whose very name is a synonym for foolish financial schemes, was a banker, and a very successful one. Where was there ever a crazier scheme than the so-called “Baltimore Plan,” exclusively the work of bankers?
But as the bankers and great capitalists have no faith in it, the free coinage of silver would certainly precipitate a panic.
The gold basis has already precipitated several panics. Even in so conservative a country as England they have, since adopting monometallism, had a severe currency panic every four years, and a great industrial depression on an average once in seven years. The only reason we have not done worse is that the rapid development of the natural resources of the country saves us from the consequences of our folly. We draw on the future, and in no long time it honors our drafts. Nevertheless, in the twenty-three years since silver was demonetized we have had two grand panics, several minor currency panics, hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies with liabilities of billions, and five labor wars in which 900 persons were killed and $230,000,000 worth of property destroyed. Could a silver basis do worse?