Ought not the value of money,
and what shall constitute money, be left, without governmental
interference, to be determined by the common consent of mankind?
Must not commercial intercourse among all the countries of the
world necessarily regulate all this, in spite of the decrees of
government? Ought not the function of government in this regard
to be limited to the coining of money and stamping on its face its
real value--that is, in effect, the amount of gold or silver it
actually contains? In short, is not the attempt of government to
make a certain weight of one thing equal to a certain weight of
another thing a plain violation of a natural law, and hence
necessarily vicious? Is not all our serious monetary controversy
in this country the result of vicious teaching to be found in our
own Constitution, inherited from a corrupt age, when the fiat of
a prince was thought sufficient to make a coin worth more than it
was in fact? Where did so many of the people of the United States
learn the heretical doctrine of fiat money? Is it not taught in
the Constitution of the United States? It so seems to me, and
hence it seems to me that the people should at once strike at the
very root of the evil, and eradicate from their fundamental law
the theory that the value of anything can be regulated by arbitrary
fiat, in violation of natural law. Let the people restore to
themselves their inalienable right to liberty of trade, so that
they can deal with each other in gold, or in silver, or in cotton,
or in corn, as they please, and pay in what they have agreed to
pay in, without impertinent interference from legislators or anybody
else. Then, and only then, can the monetary system of this country
be placed on a sound foundation, and all the gold or silver of our
mines, as well as all the other products of human industry, and
the people who produce or own them, become truly free.

Another important lesson taught by our experience since the Civil
War, no less than at the commencement of that period, is that prompt
and vigorous action, in accordance with established military methods,
whenever military force must be employed, necessarily presupposes
such knowledge of the laws on the part of department and army
commanders as will justify the President in intrusting them with
discretionary authority to act without specific orders in each
case. Such emergencies as that of 1894, for example, give striking
proof of the necessity f