the years 1848 and 1851. And in order to retain within the country a sufficient amount of small coin the amount of silver in the small coins, from the half-dollar downwards, was reduced by an Act of 24th February 1853. It was at the same time provided that they should be coined only on Government account, and they were made legal tender only up to the sum of five-dollars.
The direction of this step will be seen at a glance—it Page 260 was in the direction of the gold valuation. This is as plainly the case as it was in the Latin Union, already exemplified (p. 190). Further, it was so conceived and explicitly stated by Dunham, who piloted the bill through the House. "We have had," he said, "but a single standard for the last three or four years. That has been and now is gold. We propose to let it remain so, and to adapt silver to it, to regulate it by it." Legally, the old silver dollar was left untouched, and the gold and silver valuation was not expressly abolished. No reference whatever was made to the silver dollar in the Act, for the simple reason that for years nothing had been seen of them. They did not and could not circulate. There was plenty of gold, and the absence of silver with the change in standard therein practically implied was either unnoticed, or regarded, if at all, only with indifference.
The final step in the simplification and unification of this system was commenced in 1870, when a bill was prepared for