Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1896-05-29
W'a5hingtuu STANDARD
BLAINE ON SILVER.
WHAT THE GREAT REPUBLICAN
LEADER SAID

WHAT THE GREAT REPUBLICAN
LEADER SAID
I'm HIS Mastery speech In the q. 5.
senate. Feb. eth, 1878. on Bland's
Free Coinage Hill When Viewed
Prophecy.
Il believe gold and silver coin to be
the money Of the constitution-in-
deed, the money Of the American peo-
pie anterior TO the constitution,
money with which the organic law OF
the republic recognized as independ-
ent OF its own existence. No power
was conferred on Congress to declare
that either metal should not be
money.
Congress has therefore, in my
judgment, no more power to demone-
tie silver than to demonetize gold;
no more power to demonetize either
than to demonetize both. In this
statement / am but repeating the
wcighty doctrine of the first of consti-
tutional lawyers. Il am certainly OF
the opinion said Mr.. Webster, that
gold and silver, at rates fixed by Con-
gress, constitute the legal standard OF
value in this country, and that neither
Congress nor any State has the au-
tllority to establish any other stand
ard or to displace this Standard Few
persons can be found, l apprehend,
who will maintain that Congress pos
sesses the power to demonetize both
gold and silver, or that Congress be
justified in prohibiting the coinage OF
both; and yet in logic and legal con.
struction it would be difficult to show
where and why the power of Congress
over silver is greater than over gold
greater over either than over both.
"What power, then, has Congress
over gold and silver? 1t has the ex-
elusive power to coin them; the exclu-
sive power to regulate their value
very great, very wise, very necessary
powers, for the discreet exercises of
which a critical occasion has now
arisen.
"The demonstration of silver in
the German empire and the conse-
quent partial, or we'll nigh complete,
suspension of coinage in the govern
ment of the Latin Union. has been
the leading causes for the rapid de-
cline in the value OF silver. l do not
think the over supply of silver has
had, in comparison with these other
causes, an appreciated influence in the
decline of its value, because its over
supply with respect to gold in these
later years has not been so great as
was the over-supply of gold with re-
spect to silver for many years after the
mines of California and Australia were
opened, and the oversupply OF gold
from those rich sources did not effect
the relative positions and uses of the
two metals in any European country.
"The European countries, when
driven to full reconciliation. as
believe they will be in the end,
must of necessity adopt their old
ratio of fifteen-and-a-half to one of
gold, and we shall then be COM
PEELED to adopt the same instead Of
our former ration of sixteen to one.
1.-THE difficult problem is what
we shall do when we aim to re es-
tablish silver without the co.opera.
ton of European powers, and
really as an advance movement to
coerce those powers into the same
policy" (Mr. Blaine for this
purpose recommended that the
dollar shall contain four hundred
and twenty-five grains of standard
silver, of unlimited coinage and Of
unlimited legal tender.) ut would
not be difficult to show that, in the
nations where both have been fully
recognized and most widely diffused
the steadiest and most continuous
prosperity has been epjoyed-that
true form of prosperity which
reaches all classes, bat which be-
gins with the day laborer whose
toll lays the foundation of the
superstructure of wealth.
"The exclusively gold nation
like England may show the most
massive fortunes in the classes, but
it also shows the most helpless and
hopeless poverty in the humble
walks of like.
1.-THE gold and silver nations like
France can exhibit no such in.
dividual fortunes as abound in a
gold nation like England, but it has
a peasantry whose silver saving
can pay a war indemnity that
would have beggared the gold
bankers of England, and to which
the peasantry of England could not
have contributed pound sterling
in gold or even shilling in silver.
"The difference to the United
States, between the general &C
ceptance and general destruction
of silver as money in the com
mercial world, will possibly, in the