was brought before the lower house of Congress by Mr. Lowndes. In December 1828, however, the Senate required the Secretary of the Treasury to ascertain the ratio and to state such alterations in the gold coins as might be necessary to conform those coins to the silver coins in their true relative value.
In his report Secretary Ingham insisted on the advantage of a single standard, but, in case of a determination to maintain both gold and silver, he proposed to approximate as near as could be to the French system by establishing a ratio of 15.625. In case of no change of the ratio he proposed to discontinue the gold coinage, whenever the premium for gold should exceed 2 per cent.
No action was taken on these reports, nor on the similar proceedings in the two following years, nor very little more on the report which in June 1832 the select committee on coins produced. Part of the instructions given to this committee were "to inquire into the expediency of making silver the only legal tender, and of coining and issuing gold coins of a fixed weight and fineness, which shall be received in payment of all debts to the United States, at such ratio as may be fixed from time to time but shall not otherwise be a legal tender."
In the House of Representatives the converse proposition of a gold standard with a restricted legal tender had been made by M. Wilde, 26th March 1832, but when the report appeared it advocated a silver standard.
UNITED STATES: THE ACT OF 1834
While Congress was thus delaying over a vital question the New York bankers, May 1834, pressed for the regulation of the gold coins, so as to retain them in the country.
Two months later, 31st July 1834, the long-sought measure passed, but in an extraordinary form. At a blow the ratio was changed from 1:15 to 1:16 (15.988), by the reduction of the weight of the fine gold in the gold coins to 23.20 Troy grains, soon afterwards, by an Act of 18th July 1837, changed to 23.22 grains, the standard being changed at the same time from 11⁄12 to 9⁄10 fine.
The motives and amount of wisdom which underlay this sudden close of a long period of agitation can be measured from Benton's own words, in his Thirty Years' View:—
"A measure of relief was now at hand, before which the machinery of distress was to balk and cease its long and cruel labours—it was the passage of the bill for equalising the value of gold and silver and legalising the tender of foreign coins of both metals. The bills were brought forward in the House by Mr. Campbell H. White of New York, and passed after an animated contest in which the chief question was as to the true relative value of the two metals, varied by some into a preference for National Bank paper; 15 5⁄8 was the ratio of nearly all who seemed best calculated from their pursuits to understand the subject. The thick array of speakers was on that side, and the eighteen banks of the city of