It is a grave financial error for this country to endeavor to return to gold as money. All the practices under the gold standard have been positive and ample refutations of the arbitrary value accorded to gold. A _dollar_ in gold can only exchange a _dollar_ in value in any other substance; and the practice of issuing a greater amount of bank notes than the bank has gold dollars to redeem them by, is a _legalized_ system to _rob_ the people; since it is _evident_ that a bank having three hundred thousand dollars in notes in circulation, and only one hundred thousand dollars in gold in its vaults, can redeem but _one-third_ of its circulation if it be all presented at once for redemption. All the other securities of a bank, such as its discounts, personal property and real estate, may become of no value, or may be placed out of reach of the holders of its circulation, so that the only _real_ security for its circulation is what it may have in gold in its vaults. Beside, what right has a bank to receive legal interest on three times the amount of its real security? Is not this a most _transparent_ method of _swindling_ the people? Hence I assert that the use of gold as money _always_ results disastrously to the producers of wealth, and _always_ beneficially to those who are permitted to absorb all their productions. Another unanswerable reason why gold cannot answer the requirements of money is found in the _degrees of value_ which belong to different products of labor, and which are _universally_ determined by the sacrifice required to produce them. That is to say, all other things being equal, the _relative_ value of products is determined by the _time_ and _labor_ required to produce them. The increase in the value of manufactured material is in _exact_ proportion to the _time_ required and _wealth_ consumed in their manufacture. The value of gold is determined in _precisely_ the same manner; and it is simply foolishness to assert that the value of gold never changes, or that it has the same purchasing power at all times. Suppose there should be immense fields of gold suddenly developed all over the country, so that it would become as common and plentiful as iron or coal, would it not decrease in value in comparison with other products? That is to say, would an ounce of gold then possess as great a proportionate value to other products as it now does? No one will pretend it. Then gold is just as much the subject of fluctuation as is any other product of labor, and for _just the same_ reasons—demand and supply—which are the great arbitrators of values in all parts of the world.