But it may easily be shown that this is a complete illusion. Foreigners do not send their products to the United States to take back greenbacks in exchange. The return which they look for is either gold or the commodities of the country; and if these have risen in price in proportion as the paper money has been depreciated, how should the advance in paper prices constitute an inducement for them to send their goods thither? The nominal gain in greenbacks on the importation is exactly balanced by the nominal loss when those greenbacks came to be converted into gold or commodities. The gain may, in particular cases, exceed the loss, but, if it does, the loss will also, in other cases, exceed the gain. On the whole, and on an average, they can not but be the equivalents of each other. Mr. President, the best place in the world where we can have gold is not in the Treasury of the United States, not in any sub-treasury, but in circulation, if not in our own country, then, in the foreign countries where our surplus products are sold. That is where gold would do us the most good by making money plentiful and prices correspondingly high. It does us no good here whatever, locked up as it always is, and doing none of the work of money, but simply reduces to the minimum the tax-paying and debt-paying power of our wheat- and cotton-growing communities. An unjust money should not be tolerated, whatever the material of which it may be composed, and the people of this country will not tolerate it. They do not fear the outflow of gold. If, in order to retain it, they must continue to lose as they have been losing for the past fifteen years, they will favor its going, and raise a shout of joy when it does go. With a perfect money system in our own country the range of our domestic prices would continue stable and equitable without regard to the prices of foreign countries. Our foreign trade would take care of itself, and whatever the balances might be, they would be much oftener in our favor than against us, and in reality concern only the importing merchant and not the Government or the people of the United States. The difficulty of gold-using countries to get our money, in which to pay us the balances they would owe us, would be much greater than our difficulty in getting their money, in which to pay them the occasional balances we might owe them. Much the more serious question, (if it be a serious question at all, which I deny) is how they shall get our money, not how we shall get theirs. As the balances would be for the most part in our favor, it is for them to take such steps as may be necessary in order to pay us. But there is no just reason to apprehend difficulty in either case. A great country like the United States will have no trouble in buying the money of any other country at equitable rates--at rates regulated by the purchasing powers of the moneys of the two countries, respectively.