4. That where no fraud is practised, every person, who is mentally competent to make reasonable contracts, must be presumed to be as competent to judge of the value of the money that is offered in the market, as he is to judge of the value of all the other commodities that are bought and sold for money. Will you dispute the truth of that proposition? 5. That the free and open market, in which all honest money and all honest commodities are free to be given and received in exchange for each other, is the true, final, absolute, and only test of the true and natural market value of all money, as of all the other commodities that are bought and sold for money. Will you dispute the truth of that proposition? 6. That any prohibition, by a government, of any such kind or amount of money--provided it be honest in itself--as the parties to contracts may voluntarily agree to give and receive in exchange for labor or property, is a palpable violation of their natural right to make their own contracts, and to buy and sell their labor and property on such terms as they may find to be necessary for the supply of their wants, or may think most beneficial to their interests. Will you dispute the truth of that proposition? 7. That any government, that licenses a small amount of an article of such universal necessity as money, and that gives the control of it into a few hands, selected by itself, and then prohibits any and all other money--that is intrinsically honest and valuable--palpably violates all other men's natural right to make their own contracts, and infallibly proves its purpose to be to enable the few holders of the licensed money to rob all other persons in the prices of their labor and property. Will you dispute the truth of that proposition? Are not all these propositions so self-evident, or so easily demonstrated, that they cannot, with any reason, be disputed? If you feel competent to show the falsehood of any one of them, I hope you will attempt the task. SECTION XIV. If, now, you wish to form some rational opinion of the extent of the robbery practised in this country, by the holders of this monopoly of money, you have only to look at the following facts. There are, in this country, I think, at least twenty-five millions of persons, male and female, sixteen years old, and upwards, mentally and physically capable of running machinery, producing wealth, and supplying their own needs for an independent and comfortable subsistence. To make their industry most effective, and to enable them, _individually_, to put into their own pockets as large a portion as possible of their own earnings, they need, _on an average_, one thousand dollars each of _money capital_. Some need one, two, three, or five hundred dollars, others one, two, three, or five thousand. These persons, then, need, _in the aggregate_, twenty-five thousand millions of dollars ($25,000,000,000), of money capital.