Joel Frederick Vaile
Published: 2015-08-05
Total Pages: 54
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Excerpt from Elementary Facts Bearing on the Silver Question: With Suggestions as to Their Present Significance The Constitution of the United States provides that Congress shall have power "To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin." (Art. I., Sec. 8, paragraph 5.) It also provides that no State shall coin money or "make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." (Art. I., Sec. 10, paragraph t.) Under the authority given by the Constitution, the act establishing the United States Mint was passed, and was approved April 2, 1792. It provides that the ratio of silver and gold shall be 15 to 1, and that any person may bring either gold or silver bullion to the mint to be coined, and that it shall be coined free of expense, and that all gold and silver coins struck at the mint shall be lawful tender in all payments whatsoever (1 U. S. Stat. at Large, p. 246). At that time the generally accepted ratio in France and Southern Europe was 15 DEGREES to 1, and those countries had free coinage laws. As silver, therefore, was relatively more valuable in the United States than in Europe, the result of this difference of ratio was that silver came to the United States where it was worth more gold, and gold went from the United States to Europe where it was worth more silver. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.