to know that the increased circulation secured by the act has
exerted, and will continue to exert a most beneficial influence upon
business and upon general values."

Such an influence that circulation did indeed continue to exert. The
comparative prosperity of the two following years, which, in contrast
with the conditions of the subsequent period, causes 1892 to wear to
wistful eyes so beautiful a hue in these unhappy days, would have been
an absolute impossibility but for the silver legislation.

Nor was the credit of the government menaced. It was a malicious
afterthought that represented the silver dollar as a charge upon the
credit of the nation. That dollar was a standard dollar. It was never
"redeemed" in anything but the money-work it did. There was no law for
its redemption, and there was as yet no attempt, such as Mr. Carlisle
in 1896 declared himself ready to make, to commit the crime of an
administrative degradation of the circulating silver dollars into
promises for the payment of gold. The Treasury Notes, issued in
payment for silver bullion under the law of 1890, were redeemable in
either gold or silver at the discretion of the Secretary of the
Treasury; and inasmuch as there was silver behind every one of them,
they could become a menace to the credit of the government only in
case of the betrayal of his duty by that official.

But the contractionists looked with alarm upon the improving
conditions of the country. Something must be done to discredit silver,
or by and by there might arise such a demand for the full restoration
of its mint privileges and money powers as could not be balked, as
every similar demand had been balked since 1873; and in that event the
slow villany of many years would have been fruitless and the
contractionists' occupation would be gone. Then was formed the deep
design to compel the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman
law. The gigantic forces that had been behind Mr. Cleveland in the
memorable campaign of 1892 had not lost their cunning or their power.
They knew their implements, and they had had much experience. Their
strategy was customary and it was effective. To-day Mr. Cleveland
complains because the Republican party, having won the contest of last
November on the money question, should have hurried into the current
extra session on the tariff question. Let him recall his own course
when, having carried the country in 1892 on the tariff question, he
summone