Birmingham age-herald., 1895-05-24

gressive south. When the great civil war
 closed your industrial system was de-
 stroyed, your commercial relations were
 all broken up, your currency was worth
 less your farms were devastated, your
 mines were closed, your forests were un-
 touched your water power was useless
 and your railways were unsafe and mad
 equate even for the limited service they
 had to perform: but your great natural
 resources were still unimpaired, and upon
 that foundation you have constructed,
 and are still constructing, a system of
 diversified industries and interstate and
 international commerce which, If not
 disturbed by unWiSe experiments in man.
 cial legislation, must attract to your sec
 tfon of the country all the active capital
 and skilled labor necessary to make it
 the most prosperous part of the conti-
 nent.
 Your magnificent deposits of coal and
 iron. your fertile soil, adapted to the
 growth of cotton, sugar and many other
 products which no other part of the
 country will yield, your unrivalled fa- cilities for the manufacture of iron and steel, cotton goods lumber oil, fnrni- ture, and almost innumerable other r.
 ticles which can be cheaply produced from the raw materials within your linn it's, constitute the elements of mar vellous growth and prosperity (which nothing can prevent if the people Of the south will continue to exhibit in the fu- Iure the same SplIll Ol COIStI NdllSih anu
 the same devotion to principle that have
 always characterized them in the past. The world has never witnessed grander exhibition of courage and fortitude than
 was presented here when defeated and impoverished people, without money or credit, and almost destitute Of the tools and implements necessary to the per formance of manual labor, went uncom-
 plainingly to work to re-establish their social order, renew their commercial re- lations and reconstruct their industrial
 system; and I am unwilling to believe
 that the same people can now be so dis couraged by a temporary business de-
 pression, or so moved by appeals to their prejudces, that they will hastily resort to new and hazardous experiments with the currency in which all their transac-- tions must be conducted.
 do not charge that our fellow citi-
 zens who propose to revolutionize our monetary system by a sudden change in the standard of value really desire to
 see the business of the country ruined. or even injured, or that they believe any injurious consequences would follow the adoption of their policy, but, in my 1udg- ment, the results would be most disas- trous to the material interests of all the people in every part of the country, and. therefore I shall appeal to them carefully to review the grounds upon
 which their opinions have been formed before it is too late to correct possible
 mistake upon a subject or such supreme importance to themselves and to their posterity It is not necessary to i'm peach their motives in order to answer their arguments, nor would 1t be wise or proper to underestimate the intellectual and material forces behind this great popular movement in the south and west, movement which now seriously threatens to disrupt existing political organizations and reform party lines; but no matter whatsmay be the motives or the present numerical strength Of our opponents in this controversy, the mer- it's of the policy they propose to inau- gurate must be subjected to the tests of reason and experience, and If 1t Is shown to be impracticable or fundamentally wrong in principle, we may be confident that it will not finally command the support of a majority of. our people.
 A Few Bed-Rock Facts.
 Before proceeding to the discussion of l the main question presented, 1t may be | adyantageous to state as briefly as pos sible few admitted or well-esta blished facts having an important bearing upon it. From the earliest times gold and sill yer have been used as money, not because there was at the beginning any law de- caring them to be money, but because, by reason of their limited and regular supply, their great value as compared with other things in proportion to weight and bulk and their durability, they were more stable and convenient than any other commodity as measures Of value In
 making exchanges. Consequently. these metals were used as money by common consent of the people for centuries be- fore there was any law upon the subject or any coins in existence; they passed by | weight and their values in effecting ex changes were determined by the quan- tity of pure metal contained in each cob. al hn6 n d dfcff fnn wall no of it's own, and when it was used in trade neither the buyer nor seller troubled him self about the ratio between 1t and the other metal. The laws of trade fixed and regulated the actual and relative values of both metals in the purchase and sale of other commodities, just as they do now. They had been used as money several centuries before any government undertook, by royal proclamation of statute law, to establish a ratio between them, and when this character of legis- lation was first begun, the public author ities did not attempt to establish new values or new ratios, but accepted those already fixed by the laws of trade and the custom of merchants. Coins were made. not for the purpose of attempting to add anything to the intrinsic or ex- changeable value of the metal contained in them, but for the purpose of attesttng, by public authority, its weight and purity, thus avoiding the delay and un. certainty resulting from the practice of weighing each piece as 1t passed from one to another. That the coinage of the
 metal does not now add anything to their actual value in the commercial world, is conclusvely proved by the facts that, in all the great transactions between the people of different countries, the coins are accepted only at their bullion value, l determined by their actual weight and hneness, and that bullion itself is still l n in r,1alxiDp rau e xuo | thousands of years ago.
 Whatever effect legislation upon the