State Convention—Agricultural Rag-Baby. 191 
dilating medium, which do not inhere in the precious metals, and 
the lack of which makes them vitally objectionable in the present 
condition of trade and civilization, and the objection to them will 
be still more marked as these conditions advance or increase in the 
future. We enumerate a few: 
1. Their weight. 
2. Their limited quantity. 
3. The limited area in Avhich they are procurable. 
4. Their enormous cost in labor to procure, transport, and coin. 
5. The rapidity with which they become deteriorated in value by 
use, it having been ascertained that in the use of about $33,000,000 
of gold and $16,000,000 of silver in one year, there is an actual 
• loss by friction of $100,000. 
There are several minor objections, such as 
1st. In convenience in carrying about. 
2d. The ease with which their presence is ascertained, rendering 
it unsafe to carry on account of robbery. 
3d. The difficulty of detecting counterfeit coins, loss of weight, 
and other means of reducing their value. 
4th. The different coinages being of different actual values, the 
standard of alloys being different at different times. 
Greatest objection. —Finally, the most vital objection and the one 
before which all that we have enumerated pale into insignificance 
is that a coined metallic currency has combined in its nature two 
entirely distinct powers, an inherent or intrinsic value in the ma¬ 
terial arising from its natural properties, and a purely legal value, 
'conferred hy statute in the coinage. 
This combination of powers or qualities so utterly dissimilar in 
their nature gives rise to a great confusion of ideas in the common 
mind concerning money and the laws governing its uses, distribu¬ 
tion, etc. This use of a commodity, so limited in its quantity 
and natural distribution, creates a privileged class, namely, the 
owners or owner of the gold mines of the country, for with the 
great advance in individual wealth, it is not an unlikely event that 
one man may yet have control of all the mines on the Pacific Slope, 
and thus put a whole nation under tribute; but aside from the im¬ 
minent danger of such an event, the fact still remains, that a law 
giving the few owners of the gold and silver mines an absolute 
monopoly against which there can be no remedy, is just so far ere- 
