fineness, which shall be received in payment of all debts to the United States, at such ratio as may be fixed from time to time but shall not otherwise be a legal tender."
In the House of Representatives the converse proposition of a gold standard with a restricted legal tender had been made by M. Wilde, 26th March 1832, but when the report appeared it advocated a silver standard. Page 257
While Congress was thus delaying over a vital question the New York bankers, May 1834, pressed for the regulation of the gold coins, so as to retain them in the country.
Two months later, 31st July 1834, the long-sought measure passed, but in an extraordinary form. At a blow the ratio was changed from 1:15 to 1:16 (15.988), by the reduction of the weight of the fine gold in the gold coins to 23.20 Troy grains, soon afterwards, by an Act of 18th July 1837, changed to 23.22 grains, the standard being changed at the same time from 11⁄12 to 9⁄10 fine.
The motives and amount of wisdom which underlay this sudden close of a long period of agitation can be measured from Benton's own words, in his Thirty Years' View:—
"A measure of relief was now at hand, before which the machinery of distress was to balk and cease its long and cruel labours—it was the passage of the bill for equalising the value of gold and silver and legalising the tender of foreign coins of both metals. The bills were brought forward in the House by Mr. Campbell H. White of