John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[448] of his views adopted, and the public service in Washington, as well as in New York, relieved from the scandal of jobbery and corruption, by the selection of clean and honest men for office, wasted no time singing paeans of triumph, but settled down to the consideration of important questions of national politics as they arose.

From the start he opposed the effort to increase the use of silver as a money metal by any of the devices brought forward by the politicians or the representatives of the silver-mining interests. He also opposed independent bimetallism on any plan not approved or supported by the entire commercial world. Rich as our country had become, and great as were the resources of its government, he scrutinized all propositions, and still more all legislation, which looked to an independent effort on their part to maintain silver at a parity with gold on an arbitrary basis of relative values. So long as that proposition was a living issue the editorial page of the Sun bristled with articles against it, and stood by the sound economic principle that the American standard of value, like that of the commercial world at large, should be gold, and gold alone. As the question of sixteen to one has been settled apparently forever, it would be both unprofitable and tiresome to summarize the arguments, or even to quote such as Dana himself may have formulated from time to time.

With an occasional denunciation of the rascality of the Louisiana returning board, for which it had a deep and abiding hatred, and an occasional paragraph in favor of the wholesome practice of turning out the federal officeholders from time to time and putting new men in their places, the Sun gave special attention to the affairs of New York City. While it was tolerant of Tammany as a charitable association, it was bitterly opposed to the rule of the bosses, and in the campaign of 1870 against their candidate for mayor it exerted a remarkable influence