Where paper money is made redeemable in gold or silver the paper money is said to rest on a “specie basis.” This monetary scheme now prevails throughout the civilized world. In almost every commercial nation a large portion of the currency in use is paper money, convertible in theory, at least, into metallic money, at the option of the holder. This financial system is framed upon the violent hypothesis that real money can only be made of the precious metals and that paper bills are not money, but only representatives of money. Those who are addicted to this theory are in the habit of designating coins made of the precious metals as “primary money,” “redemption money” or “standard money;” while paper bills are called “secondary money,” or “credit money,” and are worthless except as they may be redeemed in “primary money.” The specie basis may be gold or silver or both. Since the world-wide demonetization of silver, gold only is the basis in the leading nations of the earth. The specie basis theory is open to the following weighty objections: 1. It is contrary to the fundamental law of the United States—the Constitution. Judge Tiffany, in his work on Constitutional Law, expounding the right of Congress “to coin money and regulate the value thereof,” says: “The authority which coins or stamps itself upon the article can select what substance it may deem suitable to receive the stamp and pass as money; and it can affix what value it deems proper, independent of the intrinsic value of the substance upon which it is affixed.” This learned opinion, which annihilates all necessary distinction between “primary” and “secondary” money, was followed by the United States Supreme Court in the celebrated Greenback cases, and hence has all the authority of law. (See 12 Wallace’s Reports, p. 519.) 2. The specie basis theory is contrary to the facts of history, some of which will be recited in succeeding pages. Many instances are recorded in which paper and other material have been successfully used as money where no redemption in coin was promised or possible. 3. The specie basis theory postulates that a certain amount of “redemption money” will support or float a proportional amount of “credit money;” as the specie increases the paper money may be safely increased; and as the specie decreases paper money must also be decreased—a philosophy that would lead to the absurd conclusion that when all specie disappears the people can have no money of any kind. Mr. R. H. Patterson, a distinguished English economist, truly puts the paradox as follows: