The United States has joined the commercial nations of the first rank in making gold the world's standard of value. In doing this we have never departed from the theoretical principle of bimetallism as announced by Hamilton and Washington and Webster and all our statesmen without exception down to 1869. The contest was an exceedingly close one. The arguments in support of the free coinage of silver were specious and dangerous. Undoubtedly for a time, and more than once, they converted a majority of the American people. The battle for honest money would have been lost but for the wisdom of the Republican statesmen who planted the party not only upon the doctrine of theoretical bimetallism, but also upon the doctrine that the question of the standard of value must be settled by the concurrence of the commercial nations of the world and that if there were to be one metal as a standard, gold, the most valuable metal, was the fittest for the purpose. That was the doctrine of Alexander Hamilton. To have avowed any other principle would have reinforced our opponents with the powerful authority of Hamilton and all his disciples down to the year 1873. The war taxes have been abolished. The weight of the burden which has been in that way lifted from the shoulders of the people may perhaps be understood from the statement of a single fact. The Worcester District, which I represented, paid in the direct form of taxes to the National Treasury the enormous sum of $3,662,727 for the year ending June 30, 1866. For the year ending June 30, 1871, the taxes so paid amounted in all to $225,000, and for the year ending June 30, 1872, they amounted to about $100,000. The policy of protection to American industry, which, like the question of honest elections, has been always in contest between the Republican Party and its Democratic antagonist has, unless during the two Administrations of President Cleveland, been successfully maintained. As a consequence of that policy our manufacturing independence has been achieved. The United States has become the foremost manufacturing nation in the world. We are penetrating foreign markets, and have built up a domestic commerce, the like of which has never been seen before, and whose extent surpasses the power of human imagination to conceive and almost of mathematics to calculate. The temptation to extend our territory by unlawful exercise of power over Cuba and San Domingo was resisted by the American people. Cuba has been liberated and has taken her place among the free nations of the world.