value of
those coins was that they were a legal tender in the payment of debts.

If we have an international agreement for bimetallism we can not have
it all our own way--the foreigner would be entitled to a voice. Suppose
we would fix the ratio at any other than the ratio of July 14th, 1870.
Then our dollars would no longer be of the weight that the bonds call
for and the foreigner would have the best of us, for our own coins
would not be a legal tender in payment of our bonds. Now suppose we
wanted to repeal that law, could we repeal it by international
agreement? Well, I guess not. The foreigners would never consent to the
repeal of a law that was to their advantage. Therein lies the real
menace of an international agreement even if we could get it. The only
way we could ever get rid of that agreement would be just to back
squarely out, then we might properly be called repudiators.

We often hear it said that the congress of 1792 used great care to put
just a dollar's worth of silver in a silver dollar and dollar's worth
of gold in the gold dollar. Now while it is true that according to the
law of April 12, 1792, a dollar's worth of silver was put in the silver
dollar, the amount of silver became worth a dollar as a creature of
law, and it is not true that the silver dollar became worth a dollar
because of the value of the silver contained in it. That congress made
the dollar just as God made man. God said, "Let us make man," and the
Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. God did not
study and bother his mind about taking a man's worth of dust to make a
man. No, he took some dust of the ground and formed therefrom a man and
by his own authority breathed the breath of life in man's nostrils and
man thus became a living soul. God then gave man legal authority over
the living creatures of the earth and also gave him authority to
replenish the earth. Man's rights came from the power of God.

The constitution says congress shall have power to coin money and
regulate the value thereof. So congress made the dollar as God made
man, and the American congress formed the dollar of the silver and gold
of the earth, put the eagle on one side of the coin and breathed into
that coin the legal tender law, and the bimetallic dollar became a
living soul of prosperity for eighty-one years as long as the silver
and gold were allowed to fly side by