Any necessity for it? No. Any popular demand for it? No. His excuse was that he wanted a Gold Reserve out of which to pay off the $346,000,000 in Greenbacks “when presented for redemption.” Was anybody clamoring for the redemption of Greenbacks? No. Was there any law under which anybody had a right to go to the Treasury and demand gold for Greenbacks? No. Was there any custom or policy which authorized this setting apart of gold to redeem Greenbacks? No. But Sherman did it, just the same, and it soon appeared that he had made us a Mumbo Jumbo which we all worshiped and before whose mysterious power we all fell prostrate. As long as Sherman was Secretary of the Treasury the Gold Reserve was sacred. Congress looked upon it with awe. The President did it reverence. The newspapers bent to it in speechless adoration. The politicians rubbed the skin off their stomachs groveling before it. The people—the great inert mass within which is irresistible might if they but had courage and co-operation—patiently padded their knees and, likewise, knelt in mute submission. The Gold Reserve was a national institution—like the Washington Monument—not to be desecrated, but recognized, supported, defended. Senators alluded to it as they would to Plymouth Rock or Mount Vernon. It was a fixed fact which nobody disputed and all respected. Statutes referred to it, in passing, as they did to West Point or Yellowstone Park—something that was permanent, national, inseparable from the life of the Republic. There never was a law for the Gold Reserve, there never was a necessity for it, there never was an antecedent discussion in regard to it, and there never was a particle of financial sense in it. Nobody ever presented Greenbacks for redemption until Mr. Carlisle made his infamous ruling, and gold was paid out for paper and bonds issued to get the gold back. The Gold Reserve was useless until it became, under Carlisle’s ruling, a bait to set the bond trap with. To show that it has no influence upon the value of Greenbacks we need only to point to the fact that although the size of the Gold Reserve constantly fluctuated for about a year after Carlisle’s ruling, the value of the Greenbacks has not varied at all. If the Greenbacks depended on the Gold Reserve, their value would have risen and fallen with the Gold Reserve. The Greenbacks do not, and never did, depend on the Gold Reserve. They depend on the credit of the Government, and the known fact that the credit of the Government is based on $80,000,000,000 of national wealth. Their legal tender quality, their usefulness as money, their receivability for taxes and public dues, make them good in the eyes of the people irrespective of any Gold Reserve. John Sherman had no more right to make a Gold Reserve than he had to make a Silver Reserve.