It is within my knowledge that the receiver of the United States land office which was located at Batesville. Ark.. from about 1828 to 1861. received large amounts of the silver coins above mentioned in payment to the Government for its public lands. and was receiving them up to the day the State attempted to secede from the Union in May. 1861. 1I know it would be very easy for some fellow in the North or East to say that down in Arkansas and the Southwest we did not have very much money at that time. While it is true we had no great money centers like at present exist. the people there had money. most of it brought in by the immigration coming from the States east of the Mississippi River. and while I do not controvert the proposition that in the more commercial States of the Union. those having most intercourse with the countries of the Old World. it was a fact that between 1834 and 1873. when the legal ratio between gold and silver was in this country 16 to 1. while in France the ratio was 151 to 1. thereby giving a greater value to silver in France than in this country. there was a tendency in our silver coins of standard value to find their way to France. But it is not true that this was the case as to all our silver coin. and I have mentioned my own personal knowledge of affairs in some parts of the country to prove that the coins of the two metals did remain in circulation together in some sections. and that those sections of country enjoyed the benefits of bimetallic currency up to the disappearance of both gold and silver coins during the late war. But the question as to whether the coins of gold and silver will both remain in active and general circulation under any fixed or given ratio is not the great vital and underlying principle in favor of free coinage. which is the right of free access to the mints by both metals without discrimination against either.
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immigration