The Winslow mail., 1900-04-12
The Cause of Free Silver.
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law which the constitution distinctly
states the government shall not pass.
The constitution also Says that the
states shall make only gold and sill
yer coin a tender in payments of
debts. Consequently gold and silver
coin-both of them, not one or the
other-must be the coins that are legal
tender for debts-in the states, so that
would not the refusal of the govern
ment to coin silver into money at the
demand of state or of a citizen make
nugatory an enactment of the consti-
tuition which declares that the states
must have gold and silver coin legal
tenders for payments of debts? Could
state repudiate debt on the ground
that the government had rendered inn
possible a law which the constitution
distinctly stated the state must COM
ply with? For the state having silver
which the government has refused to
coin into money, the state declares that
it has not gold and silver coin as legal
tender, according to the requirements
of the constitution. Or a debtor re-
pudiate his debt for the same reason,
i. e., that his state did not comply with
the mandate of the constitution? That
the government has issued a certain
amount of silver coins, and has de-
clared these silver coins legal tender,
does not seem to answer the question
satisfactorily, for no one will contend
that the silver in the silver coin has the
same power that the gold in the gold
coin has; for in case of effacement or
accident the gold coin can be recoined
at the will of the holder, but the silver
cannot. The fact alone that the issue
of the legal tender silver coin is linn
tied may be offered, but does the state
comply with the mandate of the con-
stitution, which says it must have gold
and silver coin as a tender, when it can
have gold coined into money and cam
not have silver coined into money?
Now, if this is legal, and congress has
the power to take the power to be money
away from silver, and the issue of some
silver legal tender coin by government
satisfies the mandate of the constitu-
tion as far as the states are concerned,
has not congress the right to take the
power to be money away from gold
to demonetize gold? Is it's power over
one metal any greater than over the
other-over either than over both to-
gether? So that should government
see fit to demonetize both metals, and
so stop coinage Gmagine us having
paper money only, would not the debt
or, if his obligation said coin, be re-
lieved from paying his debt; and would
not the government be relieved from
paying any of its obligations by the
same line of reasoning that is used now
to show it must not now pay them in
silver? Would not the states find it
impossible to comply with that funda-
mental law of the constitution? 1t has
been repeatedly said that if we restore
the power to be money to silver that our
gold would leave the country. Under
a paper currency would not, by the
same line of reasoning, both metals
leave us? To call this reasoning non
sense, and to say that such a state of
things as having no coinage, is not at
all likely to occur, ETC., only begs the
question. 1 affirm positively that 100
years ago people thought then that
the demonetization of silver was as IN.
likely 10 happen, as many may think
to-day that this country will never stop
coinage altogether. For surely if the
government has the power to stop coin
ing one and be made to pay its debts in
the other, why can it not stop coming
both, and SO be relieved from paying
at all?
I would like to have some of our
statesmen, who differ from the prin-
ciples of this coinage question as laid
down by Hamilton, Jefferson, Jackson,
Webster, Blaine, and once upon time
by certain William Mckinley, explain
this-not mere assertions, but a line of
reasoning such as they would use be.
fore a court.-George Barnes, in Ma
tional Watchman.