A correspondent for whom we have a good deal of respect writes to
us to remonstrate once more against the Silver-Demonetizing Act of
1873. “Just as soon as it was discovered,” says this writer, “that
bimetallism was abolished, and before silver had fallen in price, Mr.
Bland, the humorist, as Mr. White is pleased to call him, attempted
to restore to the people a right that had been unwittingly taken
from them.” The record shows that neither Mr. Bland nor anybody
else attempted to remonetize silver until after it had fallen in
price more than 5d. per ounce. When the Act of 1873 was passed, the
London quotation for silver was 59¾d. When Mr. Bland introduced his
bill (November, 1877), the quotation was 54½d. But that is not very
important now.
The assumption that “the people” had “a right” which was “unwittingly”
taken from them embraces a congeries of errors which need to be
exposed--all the more because they are honestly entertained. In the
first place, who are “the people” who had a right that was unwittingly
taken from them? Of course, they were the people of the United States.
How do we know what the people of the United States want at any
particular period? By their action in Congress. There is no other way
by which their wants can be ascertained. Now, what do we find as to
this Act of 1873 demonetizing silver? It was passed by a Congress which
was the sole organ of the people as to such matters--passed by a vote
unanimous in one branch and nearly unanimous in the other.
“But _we_ did not understand it,” says somebody who was not a member
of Congress. It was not necessary that you should understand it. This
would be a queer country if it were necessary that all the people
should understand all the laws before they are passed. Neither the
Constitution nor common sense required that you should understand it.
But neither did they forbid your understanding it if you had wanted
to. Your understanding it would not have given it greater validity or
higher equity. Your not understanding it took nothing from its validity
or its equity. The frame of government under which you live prescribed
that your representative in Congress should act for you. It did not
even require that _he_ should understand it, but as a matter of fact he
did understand it, because it was explained to him by public officers
and also in public debate.
If we could get an impartial jury from another country or another
planet to try this question, that jury would be bound to decide that
“the people” passed that Act of 1873 in its entirety, in the only way
they ever pass an act applicable to the whole Union. The impartial
jury would probably add that since the people had had twenty years in
which to remonetize silver, and had not done so, but on the contrary
had voted down propositions of that kind _four times_ in the popular
branch of Congress, the evidence was conclusive that they were _not_
misrepresented by the Congress which passed the Act of 1873. They voted
down the remonetization of silver on the 21st of February, 1878, when
they substituted the Allison Bill for the Bland Bill by yeas 203, nays
72. They voted it down on the 8th of April, 1886, on Mr. Bland’s direct
motion for the free coinage of silver, yeas 126, nays 163. They voted
it down on the 19th of June, 1890, on a motion to concur in the Senate
free-coinage bill, yeas 135, nays 152. They practically voted it down
on the 24th of March, 1892, by voting against a parliamentary motion
made by Mr. Bland. The majority against Mr. Bland was only two votes in
this case--150 to 148--but it was sufficient for the purpose.
But we are told that “a right” was taken away from the people when
the Act of 1873 was passed, and the implication is that they have
been vainly struggling to recover this right for twenty years--a very
odd situation indeed for a country where the people can pass any law
that they really want. It is the fault of some writers that they use
important words without explaining, perhaps without knowing, their
meaning. What is this “right” of which the people were deprived by the
Act of 1873? Rights may be legal, or moral, or religious. In which
category does this right fall? If it was a legal right, it was founded
upon a law which Congress had the same right to repeal as to enact. It
is not even affirmed that this was a valuable right, although that is
implied. A man may have a legal right to two wives, but it may be an
injury to him. He may have a legal right to get drunk, but that can
hardly be considered valuable.
Was this right of coinage, of which the people were deprived, a moral
right? Moral rights are matters of opinion and of dispute, but it
may be affirmed with confidence that the existence of a moral right
of coinage, in the sense here implied, has never been affirmed or
imagined in any country or age since the world began. In the early
history of California coins were manufactured by private parties and
put in circulation, to pass for what they were worth, and this has been
done in various parts of the world at various times. Such coins had
no legal-tender property. They were small ingots which anybody could
accept or refuse, according to his liking. The contention here is that
a moral right exists for private persons to make 412½ grains of silver
legal tender for a dollar in the absence of any law to that effect and
in the teeth of any law which forbids it. This is really too absurd
for discussion--as absurd as it would be to claim this as a religious
right. We may add that if this is a moral right, it belongs to all
mankind, seeing that they have all had silver money at one time or
another. It is surprising that so few recognize it as a right or set up
any claim to it.
Finally we are told that this right had been taken from the people
“unwittingly.” We repeat that ours would be a very queer country if
no law could be passed till everybody understood it. There has been a
great deal of talk in the newspapers lately about an act of Congress
regulating the seal fisheries in Alaska. How many people knew what that
bill was before it was passed? How many know what it is now? Even the
lawyers who are discussing it before the Paris Tribunal do not agree
in their understanding of it. Science has not yet devised any means to
compel people to know what is going on in Congress. The difficulties
of forcing such knowledge upon ten or twelve millions of voters, large
numbers of whom do not speak English or read and write any language,
and still larger numbers of whom know nothing of finance, and never
could by any possibility learn anything of it, are simply appalling.
Even in the case of those who make some pretensions to scientific
attainment an attempt to make them understand the bills before Congress
would be quite herculean. Suppose that our correspondent and the writer
of this article were brought to the bar of the House and asked whether
they understood the pending measure, so that it might not be passed
“unwittingly” as to themselves, and suppose they should apply in the
affirmative, what guarantee would Congress have that they really did
understand it? They might think that they understood it when they did
not. Something of this kind actually happened in connection with the
Coinage Act of 1873. The Hon. William D. Kelley of Pennsylvania took
part in the debate on the clause dropping the silver dollar from the
list of coins, and defended that clause on the ground that the silver
dollar was worth two cents more than the gold dollar, and that it was
impossible to have two dollars of different values. He afterwards said
that he did not understand this particular part of the bill.
What happened in Mr. Kelley’s case would be still more likely to
happen in the case of talesmen hastily summoned from the body of the
people as assistant Congressmen. Our forefathers, anticipating all the
difficulties attendant upon the endeavor to force all the people to
understand all the bills before Congress at all stages, wisely provided
that such antecedent knowledge should be dispensed with, but they took
steps to give facilities for such knowledge. If it is a defect of our
system that laws are passed “unwittingly,” it is a defect which we
share with all other governments, and it seems to us to be inherent in
the representative system. At all events, we see no present cure for it.
It thus appears that our correspondent, for whom, as we have said, we
entertain much respect, has, in a single sentence, used three phrases,
all of them important, and carrying with them the gist of the debate
on a momentous question, without any clear idea of their meaning. He
has used the word “people” as though it were an entity separate and
distinct from the only organ established for the expression of its
will, but he has not told us where we can find this entity or how we
can interrogate it. He affirms that the people have been deprived of
a “right” without telling us whether it is a legal or a moral right,
or how it came to exist, or what portion of the civilized world regard
it as a right, or how we are to know that it is a right, or anything
about it. He has affirmed that the people were deprived of this
right “unwittingly,” implying that no law ought to be passed until
all the people understand it. (It is not necessary, according to the
hypothesis, that they should approve it, but only that they should
understand it.) In using these phrases in this way he has “begged
the question” completely, but we presume that he was not aware that
he was doing so. We have taken some pains to point out his unfounded
assumptions because we know that he represents a good many people who,
like himself, are honestly in error.