fixing the amount of silver in the dollar we thus utter through these coins a new falsehood each day. Constant values, not constant weights, is what we are driving at; so in lieu of the silver coin we must substitute a promise to pay a gold dollar, or a gold dollar’s worth of silver, whatever the state of the market. This is what I designate natural bimetallism. The silver dollar and fractional pieces as we now have them may nevertheless continue in circulation, for the promise can be written into them by legislation to redeem them, upon surrender, in the same manner as the paper promises. It is possible that Hamilton and his successors in office prior to 1837 may have thought of this expedient, but discarded it as not then feasible. We must remember, however, that they had serious practical difficulties to contend with, which are now happily removed. The advantages of the telegraph, the cable, the improved means of transportation, and our admirable system of market quotations, enable us now with certainty and ease to determine daily what any given thing is worth in terms of any other.

In order to make my plan as clear as possible, I shall run the risk of seeming elementary by following through, step by step, a typical transaction under it: Let us fancy that the reader, bearing a nugget of gold in his left hand and another of silver in his right, and desiring to convert them into money, repairs to the Philadelphia mint. He applies there to the proper clerk, who, for simplicity’s sake, we will suppose performs all the operations. The clerk weighs and assays the two pieces of metal, and finds the gold one to contain 25,800 grains of standard gold, worth precisely $1,000, which are counted out in bills. A similar operation reveals that the lump of silver weighs 35,500 grains, but the clerk is now observed to consult a table before saying, “The market equivalent of a gold dollar is to-day 710 grains, consequently your 35,500 grains are worth $50;” and he then proceeds to count out the money in bills precisely like those given in payment for the gold. Upon examining these at his leisure the reader discovers imprinted thereon a contract running as follows: “This note entitles the bearer on demand to [the denomination of the bill] dollars in gold or to the market equivalent thereof in silver.”