Your deliberations will probably also embrace consideration of the question of the volume and character of our currency. It will not be possible and would not be appropriate for me in this letter to enter upon any elaborate discussion of these questions. One or two things I will say, and first, I believe that every person who thoughtfully considers the question will agree with me upon a proposition which is at the base of all my consideration of the currency question, namely, that any dollar, paper or coin, that is issued by the United States must be made and kept in its commercial uses as good as any other dollar. So long as any paper money issued or authorized by the United States Government is accepted in commercial use as the equivalent of the best coined dollar that we issue, and so long as every coined dollar, whether of silver or gold, is assured of an equivalent value in commercial use, there need be no fear as to an excess of money. The more such money the better. But, on the other hand, when any issue of paper or coined dollars is, in buying and selling, rated at a less value than other paper or coined dollars, we have passed the limit of safe experiment in finance. If we have dollars of differing values, only the poorest will circulate. The farmer and the laborer, who are not in hourly touch with the ticker of the telegraph, will require, above all other classes of our community, a dollar of full value. Fluctuations and depreciations are always at the first cost of these classes of our community. The banker and the speculator anticipate, discount, and often profit by such fluctuations. It is very easy, under the impulse of excitement of the stress of money stringency, to fall into the slough of a depreciated or irredeemable currency. It is a very painful and slow business to get out when once in. I have always believed, and do now more than ever believe, in bimetallism, and favor the fullest use of silver in connection with our currency that is compatible with the maintenance of the parity of the gold and silver dollars in their commercial uses. Nothing, in my judgment, would so much retard the restoration of the free use of silver by the commercial nations of the world as legislation adopted by us that would result in placing this country upon a basis of silver monometallism. The legislation adopted by the first session of the Fifty-first Congress I was assured by leading advocates of free coinage--representatives of the silver States--would promptly and permanently bring silver to $1.29 per ounce and keep it there. That anticipation has not been realized. Our larger use of silver has apparently, and for reasons not yet agreed upon, diminished the demand for silver in China and India.