Several questions have been presented to the American people for their solution, and I propose to speak a little about those questions, and I do not want you to pretend to agree with me. I want no applause unless you honestly believe I am right.
Three great questions are presented: First, as to money; second, as to the tariff, and third, whether this Government has the right of self-defence. Whether this is a Government of law, or whether there shall be an appeal from the Supreme Court to a mob. These are the three questions to be answered next Tuesday by the American people.
First, let us take up this money question. Thousands and thousands of speeches have been made on the subject. Pamphlets thick as the leaves of autumn have been scattered from one end of the Republic to the other, all about money, as if it were an exceedingly metaphysical question, as though there were something magical about it.
What is money? Money is a product of nature. Money is a part of nature. Money is something that man cannot create. All the legislatures and congresses of the world cannot by any possibility create one dollar, any more than they could suspend the attraction of gravitation or hurl a new constellation into the concave sky. Money is not made. It has to be found. It is dug from the crevices of rocks, washed from the sands of streams, from the gravel of ancient valleys; but it is not made. It cannot be created. Money is something that does not have to be redeemed. Money is the redeemer. And yet we have a man running for the presidency on three platforms with two Vice-Presidents, who says that money is the creature of law. It may be that law sometimes is the creature of money, but money was never the creature of law.
A nation can no more create money by law than it can create corn and wheat and barley by law, and the promise to pay money is no nearer money than a warehouse receipt is grain, or a bill of fare is a dinner. If you can make money by law, why should any nation be poor?
The supply of law is practically unlimited. Suppose one hundred people should settle on an island, form a government, elect a legislature. They would have the power to make law, and if law can make money, if money is the creature of law, why should not these one hundred people on the island be as wealthy as Great Britain? What is to hinder? And yet we are told that money is the creature of law. In the financial world that is as absurd as perpetual motion in mechanics; it is as absurd as the fountain of eternal youth, the philosopher's stone, or the transmutation of metals.
What is a dollar? People imagine that a piece of paper with pictures on it, with signatures, is money. The greenback is not money—never was; never will be. It is a promise to pay money; not money. The note of the nation is no nearer money than the note of an individual. A bank note is not money. It is a promise to pay money; that is all.
Well, what is a dollar? In the civilized world it is twenty-three grains and twenty-two one hundredths of pure gold. That is a dollar. Well, cannot we make dollars out of silver? Yes, I admit it, but in order to make a silver dollar you have got to put a dollars worth of silver in the silver dollar, and you have to put as much silver in it as you can buy for twenty-three grains and twenty-two one-hundredths' of a grain of pure gold. It takes a dollar's worth of silver to make a dollar. It takes a dollar's worth of paper to make a paper dollar. It takes a dollar's worth of iron to make an iron dollar; and there is no way of making a dollar without the value.
And let me tell you another thing. You do not add to the value of gold by coining it any more than you add to the value of wheat by measuring it; any more than you add to the value of coal by weighing it. Why do you coin gold? Because every man cannot take a chemist's outfit with him. He cannot carry a crucible and retort, scales and acids, and so the Government coins it, simply to certify how much gold there is in the piece.
Ah, but, says this same gentleman, what gives our money—our silver—its value? It is because it is a legal tender, he says. Nonsense; nonsense. Gold was not given value by being made a legal tender, but being valuable it was made a legal tender. And gold gets no value to-day from being a legal tender. I not only say that, but I will prove it; and I will not only prove it, but I will demonstrate it. Take a twenty dollar gold piece, hammer it out of shape, mar the Goddess of Liberty, pound out the United States of America and batter the eagle, and after you get it pounded how much is it worth?