The Coconino weekly sun., 1896-09-03
Foolishness of the Declaration in Favor of Monetary h.
 dependence.
P0PULIST IDEAS OF FINANCE.
Feeble Attempt to Invoke the Ma, tons Fathers in Support of
 Free Coinage.

the P0pullstlc platforms, perhaps the most foolish is the one that we can ere dependent of that of other nations. To make this stroke of idiocy more prepos- terous, the spirit and the example of the fathers of the republic are invoked to sustain it. The efforts of the fathers were most earnestly and steadily directed to bringing the young republic within the commercial brotherhood of nations, and nothing was. further from their thoughts than the idea that the progress of the country could be facilitated by a declaration of financial independence. For sixty years after the passage of the mint act, English, French, Spanish and Portuguese coins were freely circulated in the United States, and were a legal tender for the payment of debts at cer- tain values fixed by act of Congress. In his celebrated Mint Report, Alexander Hamilton endeavored to coordinate our monetery system with that of other na- tions--not to make any violent departure from European practice. The only strik
 ing departure that was made in the legis- lation framed on Hamilton's recom- mendations was in fixing the coinage ratio between gold and silver at 15 to 1, and the result of this quickly demon call our Financial servitude." That is to say, it showed that while the hints of France were open to the free coinage of gold at the ratio of 15lh to 1, We could not keep our gold from going where it would have most value. The difference was only about 1-3 per cent, but it was sufficient to drive gold out of the country. so that in the words of Senator Benton it's extinction was complete.
 If the establishment of ratio of their own was strike for financial independ- ence of Europe on the part of the "fa- thers. 1t was manifest failure. and established for the first generation of the republic a regime of silver mono- metallism But this was not in the least what they desired; in fact, so little were they impressed by the necessity for keeping silver as q part of the circula- tion that the coinage of silver dollars was suspended by executive order in 1895 and was, for domestic purposes at least. never resumed. That is to say, the fathers were so determined to get back the gold that for thirty years they had been shnnting into European, hints that they fixed new ratio, which off, fered 3 per cent. more to the possessOr of gold bullion than he could get in France or Holland. That the bullion in the silver dollar thus became more valua- ble than the bullion in the gold dollar did not trouble them much. for they, appar- enuy, did not want the silver dollar nai'es, quuIters anu ululeS OI tnlS metal being sufficient for their wants-and all the subsequent coinage of that much talked-of but little known piece, ''the dollar of the fathers" was for export to the East. Here, again, if monetary in- dependence was what they are aiming at, the result was failure for Europe diverted into it's own hints the silver of the United States as peremptorily as it had done the gold. for the simple req son that no law could cOmnpl the own CT of bullion not to take it where he got most for it in returned coins.
 But the POpulists are determined to have "an economic and financial system which shall make us masters of our own affairs" Among the preliminaries of such condition of things, they are at least logical enough to recognize the ne- cessity of interfering with the freedom of private contract. That was cure for financial lameness not thought of by the fathers of the republic. and is one generally deemed to be contrary to the letter and spirit of the constitution which they framed. But the transformation of the Democrat into the Populist seems, among other changes, to work a surpris- ing indifference to the value of the safe guards of the constitution. From old habit, there is the customary profession of allegiance to "those great essential principles of justice and liberty upon which our institutions are founded" only to be followed by series of propositions destructive alike of the principles and institutions. On whatever other points the makers of the constitution may have differed, they were entirely at one as to the obligation both of nations and of in- dividuals to make an honest provision for paying their debts.-Rochcster Post