GROVER CLEVELAND 277 silver and the issue of treasury notes in payment therefor. Such repeal the president strongly rec ommended, declaring that "our unfortunate finan cial plight is not the result of untoward events, nor of conditions related to our natural resources; nor is it traceable to any of the afflictions which frequently check natural growth and prosperity," but is "principally chargeable to congressional leg islation touching the purchase and coinage of silver by the general government." Reviewing such leg islation, he said: "The knowledge in business cir cles among our own people that our government can not make its fiat equivalent to intrinsic value, nor keep inferior money on a parity with superior money by its own independent efforts, has resulted in such a lack of confidence at home in the stability of currency values that capital refuses its aid to new enterprises, while millions are actually with drawn from the channels of trade and commerce, to become idle and unproductive in the hands of timid owners. Foreign investors, equally alert, not only decline to purchase American securities, but make haste to sacrifice those which they already have." He insisted further that "the people of the United States are entitled to a sound and stable currency, and to money recognized as such on every exchange and in every market of the world. Their government has no right to injure them by financial experiments opposed to the policy and practice of
