aling and sometimes
even exceeding it in amount, both maintained at a parity notwithstanding
a depreciation or fluctuation in the intrinsic value of silver.

There is a vast difference between a standard of value and
a currency for monetary use. The standard must necessarily be fixed
and certain. The currency may be in divers forms and of various kinds.
No silver-standard country has a gold currency in circulation, but an
enlightened and wise system of finance secures the benefits of both gold
and silver as currency and circulating medium by keeping the standard
stable and all other currency at par with it. Such a system and such
a standard also give free scope for the use and expansion of safe and
conservative credit, so indispensable to broad and growing commercial
transactions and so well substituted for the actual use of money. If
a fixed and stable standard is maintained, such as the magnitude and
safety of our commercial transactions and business require, the use
of money itself is conveniently minimized.

Every dollar of fixed and stable value has through the agency of
confident credit an astonishing capacity of multiplying itself in
financial work. Every unstable and fluctuating dollar fails as a basis
of credit, and in its use begets gambling speculation and undermines the
foundations of honest enterprise.

I have ventured to express myself on this subject with earnestness and
plainness of speech because I can not rid myself of the belief that
there lurk in the proposition for the free coinage of silver, so
strongly approved and so enthusiastically advocated by a multitude
of my countrymen, a serious menace to our prosperity and an insidious
temptation of our people to wander from the allegiance they owe to
public and private integrity. It is because I do not distrust the
good faith and sincerity of those who press this scheme that I have
imperfectly but with zeal submitted my thoughts upon this momentous
subject. I can not refrain from begging them to reexamine their views
and beliefs in the light of patriotic reason and familiar experience and
to weigh again and again the consequences of such legislation as their
efforts have invited. Even the continued agitation of the subject adds
greatly to the difficulties of a dangerous financial situation already
forced upon us.

In conclusion I especially entreat the people's representatives
in the Congress, who are charged with the responsibility of inaugurating