The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1886-01-27

even minor silver coinage. Like
Belgium" he said, eve have been
making large nominal profits on the
coinage of silver, but the day may
come, unless we can reach some inter-
national arrangement with the bime-
tallic nations, when the voice of our
own people will demand its redemption
in coin equal to its full nominal value.
Government wealth, fictitiously ac-
cumulated by the issue of coins above
their intrinsic value, never has been
and is not likely now to be permanent
Inheritance. 1t would be better for
the present not to have too much of it
outstanding for any possible or final
day of settlement" The senatorpointed
out that the country is exposed to grave
risks, not of counterfeits, but of dollars
made in exact similitude of our own
and containing an equal amount of sill
yer. Twenty-Five per cent of clear
profit is great temptation. There is
no kind of manufactures known any
where promising equal or safer profits
to bold and INSCRIPTIONS enterprise.
He also gave figures showing the heavy
expenses attending the transportation,
coinage, storage and distribution of the
silver dollar, and concluded his speech
as follows
The suspension of the coinage of the sill
yer dollar will not depreciate its value, nor
increase the value of the gold dollar. They
will then both pass from hand to hand
equally current in all of our business trans
actions. Confidence and stability will be
restored to our commerce, to investments,
to contracts. The laborng man will not be
in dread of pinched and deprecated dol
lar. The farmer will know that he is to re-
ceive for his grain and cattle money not a
whit inferior to the money paid to farmers
in any other country. The miseries of a
fluctuating premium on exchange will not
rise to vex the foreground of all business
affairs. The retention of all of our five or
six hundred millions of gold coin will be
assured with the promise of more annual
additions. And then we need not humbly
seek foreign aid to float the worlds product
of silver, but wait until our aid has been
sought, as sought it surely would be, to es-
tablish potential bimetallic arrangement
with the leading nations of Europe, by
which any surplus of silver would have
some chance of being utilized. The owners
of the great silver bonanzas would not then
have to rely for support upon the United
States alone, but would have the major
part of the commercial world promoting
their permanent prosperity. 1t has been
sufficiently demonstrated that the service
of the whole government for seven years in
the coinage of our "A 600 600 of silver dollars
silver, but it is worth far less to-day than in
1878, when the experiment began. 1t must
be equally obvious that it has also been a
failure as a fertilizer to misunderstanding
neither the farmer nor manufacturer to
greater products nor to greater prices. y
Is it possible that Americans will ever be
contented with a monetary system which
will subject us in all our foreign traffic to
payments in gold for all we buy and to re-
celNe LOT all we Seli HoIHihS Dut SllNer' l.
do not know how it may be with others, but
l confess that, should we ever sink to the
level of those nations of the second, third
and fourth rank, whose wealth and enter
prise is too inconsiderable to require all and
the best monetary instrumentalities includ-
ing both gold and silver, in the conduct of
trade and commerce, | should feel it to be a
sad degradation, complete surrender OF
the proud position we now hold as the fore
most power among great and enlightened