The evening light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1881-1883, 1882-02-17

which resisted the power of congress
over the question, recourse was had to
further legislation. This was far more
pardonable in statesmen then than
now. 1t was less wonderful that IN
1921 the wise men of the nation should
persist in abolishing the laws of ma
ture, than that they should be doing
so in 1873. By the Legislation OF 1923
congress, in debasing the silver dollar,
drove the gold dollar out of clrcula-
ton. Its exodus was rapid, and eleven
wears later solemn recourse was had,
singularly enough, to further legls-
latiOn as its cure. Senator
Benton, of Missouri, was not
going to accept the heresy that
democratic congress of the era of An
drew Jackson had not. power to en-
force its edict against the elements
He accordingly in 1884, introduced
bill again regulating the standards by
introducing alloy into the gold, and
thus making them conform. The Sill
yer standard dollar then in turn took
its flight, and was seen no more for
years. Thus the evil remained in spite
of repeated applications of the only re-
cognized remedy, that of subordinat-
ing the laws of trade to the law Of
congress.
In 1873, when another strike was
made at the integrity of the law of nat
ural relations,~ there had for eleven
years been actually three standards,
gold, silver and the greenback. The
surreptitious demonstration of silver
at that time was done, Intentionally or
otherwise, in the interest of the foreign
bondholder. The bonded interest in
debtedness of the government was
enhanced 40 per centum by the none
tary suppression of the silver dollar
But there was no sufficient reason for
supposing, and there is not now, that
craftsmanship had attained any
higher level than that serene alti-
tude yet occupied by Senator Sherman.
or that the Legislation of 1873 was &C
tually designed as an outrage upon the
government. We find Secretary Evarts
some years later engaged in the more
solemn absurdity of organizing joint
European and American congress for
the purpose of once more asserting the
supremacy of conventional over natu-
raj law. Yet Senator Sherman, of Ohio,
who has heretofore held the nations
stake in finance in his shaky hands, OBJ
livious to all this past history, Obvious
to the fact that gold and silver are COM
modities that have their intrinsic values
which cannot be made to conform,
gravely announces in his place in the
United States senate that
There remains but one of two things
for our government to do: either to in
crease the number of grains in the sill
yer dollar, so that its intrinsic value
will be equal to the gold dollar, or re-
duce the value of the gold dollar to an
equality with the silver dollar"
And if this senseless suggestion of
Senator Sherman is needed by con-
gress and, in profane and lawless tin
kering, it has again recourse to either
of the Sherman remedies, which are
one and the same, then goodbye once
more to the beautiful silver dollar of
our fathers, for we must learn to look
complacently upon the diminutive gold
unit, standard or no standard, and
give it the little space it exacts and
cross ourselves, meanwhile, in mute
admiration of the wisdom that pre-
serves for us government, however
little its use. 1t ought to have be-