Seventh. The question of beginning anew the coinage of silver dollars has aroused much discussion as to its effect on the public credit; and the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Matthews) placed this phase of the subject in the very forefront of the debate--insisting, prematurely and illogically, I think, on a sort of judicial construction in advance, by concurrent resolution, of a certain law in case that law should happen to be passed by Congress. My own view on this question can be stated very briefly. I believe the public creditor can afford to be paid in any silver dollar that the United States can afford to coin and circulate. We have forty thousand millions of property in this country, and a wise self-interest will not permit us to overturn its relations by seeking for an inferior dollar wherewith to settle the dues and demands of any creditor. The question might be different from a merely selfish stand-point if, on paying the dollar to the public creditor, it would disappear after performing that function. But the trouble is that the inferior dollar you pay the public creditor remains in circulation, to the exclusion of the better dollar. That which you pay at home will stay there; that which you send abroad will come back. The interest of the public creditor is indissolubly bound up with the interest of the whole people. Whatever affects him affects us all; and the evil that we might inflict upon him by paying an inferior dollar would recoil upon us with a vengeance as manifold as the aggregate wealth of the Republic transcends the comparatively small limits of our bonded debt. And remember that our aggregate wealth is always increasing, and our bonded debt steadily growing less! If paid in a good silver dollar, the bondholder has nothing to complain of. If paid in an inferior silver dollar, he has the same grievance that will be uttered still more plaintively by the holder of the legal-tender note and of the national-bank bill, by the pensioner, by the day-laborer, and by the countless host of the poor, whom we have with us always, and on whom the most distressing effect of inferior money will be ultimately precipitated.