Would it be necessary to pay these men in gold and silver? No. Would not mere paper money inscribed something like this, in denominations of one, two, five, ten, twenty and fifty dollars, answer all purposes?
This certificate, to the amount of its face value, will be received by the government of the United States in payment of all public dues, and is a full legal tender in the payment of all debts, public and private.
Would not these certificates pass everywhere for their face value? Would they not have back of them all the power of the law?
And would they not have the same power if they were issued and ordained, not by an autocrat holding merely a fictitious authority, but by the will and the vote of a sovereign people? Would they not be backed by all the wealth of the nation?
The right to issue money is a sovereign right and should be jealously guarded by a sovereign people. To delegate this power to banks and money-lenders is as grave an error as it would be to confer on a class the privilege of making laws for the whole community.
The volume of money should be regulated to suit the requirements of all the people and not the greed of those who thrive on usury.
The use of metals for money is unscientific, and they will eventually be relegated to obscurity with the shells, pelts, tally-sticks and other cumbrous mediums of exchange employed by our ancestors. But great reforms cannot be accomplished at once. Gold and silver are the money of the Constitution. The act of 1873, which made gold alone the basis of credit, and which, by reducing the volume of money, doubled the burden of debt, was a violation of the fundamental law of our government. The wrong perpetrated in 1873 must be righted now. This is the first great step in monetary reform.
Following this, the issue of interest-bearing bonds must be stopped forever. The careful student will find that interest is at the bottom of all our financial ills. Unselfish patriotism must abolish usury by substituting the credit of all the people for that of the banks.
Every physical or moral ill is the result of some breach of natural or divine law. For generations we have violated the laws of God as they relate to money and to land.
“And if thy brother be waxen poor and fallen in decay with thee, then thou shalt relieve him; yea, though he be a stranger or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him or increase; but fear thy God, that thy brother may live with thee.” (Lev. 25: 36-37.)