Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1896 — JAMES G. BLAINE ON SILVER. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

JAMES G. BLAINE ON SILVER.

“I believe the struggle now going on in this country and in other countries for a single gold standard would, if successful, produce widespread disaster in and throughout the commercial world. The destruction of silver as money, and establishing gold as the sole unit of value, must have a ruinous effect on all forms of property except those investments which yield a fixed return in money. Those would be enormously enhanced in value, and would gain a disproportionate and unfair advantage over every other species of property. If. us the most reliable statistics affirm, there is nearly seven billion dollars of coin or bullion in the world, very equally divided between gold and silver, it is impossible to strike silver out of existence as money without results that will prove distressing to millions and utterly disastrous to tens of thousands. “I believe gold and silver coin to be the money of the Constitution, indeed, the money of the American people anterior

to the Constitution, which the great organic law recognized as quite independent of its own existence. No power was conferred on Congress to declare that either metals should be money. Congress has, therefore, in my judgment, no power to demonetize silver any more than to demonetize gold—no power to demonetize either any more than to demonetize both. Few persons can be found, I apprehend, who will maintain that Congress possesses the power to demonetize both gold and silver, or that Congress could be justified in prohibiting the coinage of both, and yet in logic and legal construction it would be difficult to show where and why the power of Congress over silver is greater than over gold—greater over either than over the two. If, therefore, silver has been demonetized, I am in favor of remonetizing It. If its coinage has been prohibited, I am in favor of ordering it to be resumed. If it has been restricted, I am in favor of having it enlarged.”

Extract from a Speech Delivered in the United States Senate, Feb. 7, 1878.