The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1896-10-17

cllned in value.
Third. The supply Of gold is inadequate
to make it safe standard, and the scar
city of it will tend to the depression of
prices.
Fourth. The free unlimited coinage OF
silver at the ratio of Is to will create I'M
limited demand for silver and restore it to
par.
Fifth. Free and unlimited coinage of
silver will increase the prices Of property.
Each of these several propositions is dis
cussed with great ability. Here is what
Judge Aldredge says under the first propo-
stion above quoted: "a standard of value
is some exact measure which enters into
and becomes part of every contract and
to which all obligations are referable. If
our Government could, by legal enactment,
fix the value of gold and silver in the mar
kets of the world, and could keep them ad-
justed to- fixed ratio, double standard
would be practicable. But it cannot fix or
maintain value; the buyers OF the world
the merchants that When Abraham
purchased his lot in Epbrou's cemetery he
weighed out to Ephron silver current
money with the merchant And the mer-
chants of the world have been saying what
shall be current money from that day to
this. Governments are as powerless to
suspend the law of value as they are to sus-
pend the law of grayitation Such being
the case, | can corrective of two standards,
one Of gold and the other of silver, and con-
tracts might be made referablc to either
standard; but the indeterminate double
standard, resting on two metals, not linked
together by any binding obligation, but
both acting under 90 asyou-please rules, is
to me absolutely incomprehensib!e. We
cannot bind them together as we do two
medals in the pendulum of "A clock or in
the handspring of a watch.
mo people ever did business under the
imaginely double standard, and every at
tempt to enforce it has resulted in aiternat-
ing from one standard to the other Eng
land tried it for 40 years and it was an
utter failure. France changed her ratio lis
times in twelve years trying to walk the
doublestandard tight rope. We tried it,
and went first to a silver basis then to a
gold basis, then to paper basis, aud then
back to gold basis. The phrase double
standard is a contradiction of terms.
Standard means correct measure, aud there
can not be two different correct measures of
value any more than there can be two
different correct weights to sell by, two
different correct compasses to sail by, or
two different correct thermometers to
measure temperature by. If one measure
is correct, the other can not differ from it
and he correct. 1t is an memorable law of
a fixed ratio and both made legal tender, if
either is under-valued in the coinage law,
the under-valued metal goes out Of circula-
ton About the middle of the fourteenth
century Nicholas Oresme, the father OF
finance in France, announced his great law
to Charles V; 100 years later Copernicus,
the founder of modern astronomy, an
nounced it to the Russians, and thirty-twp
years still latter Gesham announced it to
Queen Elizabeth. Macaulay, in his His
tory of England, shows how perfectly this
law worked in England, and eloquently
describes the dreful consequences.
He was describing coins debased by clip
ping, but still legal tender A coin is just
as bad when debased by generalization in
coinage as when clipped or counterfeited.
In the one case the creditor is deceived and
in the other he is forced 1t is simply the
difference between theft and robbery. The
law of money has failed. We know what
will be its operation just as we know that
the deadiest poison will kill because it al
ways has killed
"The gold standard advocates believe in
gold as a standard with the largest possible
safe use of silver among the people. The
10 to l dreamers believe in the so-called
u'uplC sl'tueai'Ii hi4' We HlC "ii'Ni ~
this law to the use of silver alone. All
gold standard countries use large amounts
of silver, and no silver-standard country
uses any gold whatever. AS the practical
question is the use of the metals, it follows
that we are the bimetallists, and the Is to
people are the monometalists. Hence
the battle that is to be fought to a finish is
whether we will remain under gold
standard with actual himetallism in use
among the people--gold and silver circulat
ing freely without discrimination against
either: or shall we have a so-called double
standard at the minis and nowhere else,
with silver recommendation in actual use
The battle is between substance and shadow
between those who want bimetallism in
tract and those who want it in name only.
"We are the friends of silver money,
who would bring to its aid the power of
the Government to keep it good, and they
are its enemies who, by unlimited coinage
would take from it the guarantee of parity
by the Government, and thereby degrade
t to its market value. Our Government,
has been and is now coming silver at the