The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1896-07-11
SENATOR DANIEL FOR OPEN
MINTS.
Timely Views of the Virginia States
man on the Currency Issue.
john W. Daniel in New York Journal.

John W. Daniel in New York Journal.
Why am in favor of the free coinage
of silver In 1894, under the mint act
devised by Hamilton and Jefferson and
approved by Washington, appeared the
first dollar of the United States, composed
of 3714 grains of pure silver. From that
day to this, for period of 102 years, the
silver dollar has been the same in the
quantity of its pure metal, and it is the
very ideal of honest, hard, sound and sta
Bile money.
Silver and gold are unlike all other
metals and all other values. The Ger
mans call them ''the noble metals, the
English ''the royal metals. They have
been yoked together as money from the
dawn of civilization. They were money
and legal tender under the common law,
and Coke tells us in his institutes that
'sno subject can be enforced to take in
buying or selling or other payment any
money made, but only lawful metal-that
is, of silver or gold. The money of Eng
land is the treasure of England, and moth
ing is said to be treasure trove but gold
and silver.
They were the money of the colonies
before we became a nation. The consti-
tuition had them in view when it said
s'The Congress shall have power to coin
money, regulate the value thereof, and of
foreign coins, and "No state shall make
ANYTHING but gold and silver coin tender
in payment of debts.
Alexander Hamilton, in advocating the
mint act of 1892, assigned two reasons for
not attaching the unit of money exclu-
sively to one metal, the first being that to
do so would destroy the Office and char
acter of one of them as money and reduce
it to the situation of mere merchandise,
and the second, that "to annul the use of
either of the metals as money is to abridge
the quantity of the circulating medium,
and is liable to all the objections which
arise from comparison Of the benefits of
full with the evils of scanty circula-
ton.
Daniel Webster defended the double
standard, and said ''The legal tender,
the COuStlCutlUudl ctdludlN VI NdiuS; 10 -
tablished and cannot be overthrown |
ana certainly of opinion that gold and sill
yer, at rates fixed by Congress, constitute
the legal standard of value in this country,
and that neither Congress nor any state
has authority to establish any other stand
ard, or to displace this. -
We have seen the work of Hamilton
undone and the opinion of Webster over
ruled. We have seen silver bullion re-
duced to "a mere merchandise and the
ssroyal metal dethroned
We are now suffering from the evils of
scanty, in sad comparison to the bene
fits of full circulation, and | am for re-
turning to the solid and safe basis of
the free cninage Of both metals which
Congress unrighteously. and, Webster
thinks, uneonstitutionally, relealed in
1873.
Unless we have the free coinage Of sill
yer, we viii inevitably have further con-
traction of the currency, vast increase
of the public debt, an increase of taxation
by the Federal Government and by many
Of the states and their municipal divisions,
accompanied with the further decline in
the value of land, of agricultural, mining
and manufactured produce, and long de-
preston Of business, with an increase Of