equalled only by the confident silence with which he endured all the attacks upon his policy during its progress and during the election. He no doubt felt that he was doing a durable work, and that he would hand down to posterity a monumentum ære perennius of which no eloquence could impair the value, and which no eloquence was needed to defend. During that year his personal position has been stronger than ever, the devotion of his followers completely sustained, the admiration of his countrymen and of foreign nations undiminished. It is impossible that any

man should bequeath to the notice of posterity stronger proofs of the estimation in which he was held by his contemporaries, or of the ascendancy which he exercised over them. History will judge for itself the character of his aims and of his policy; but among the many illustrious names of statesmen that crowd its pages, that of Benjamin Disraeli Earl of Beaconsfield will be overshadowed by none in the splendor of his fame, and in the completeness of his devotion to the honor and interests of his country. Blackwood's Magazine.

IT may be safely said that the question of bimetallism is one which does not admit of any precise and simple answer. It is essentially an indeterminate problem. It involves several variable quantities and many constant quantities, the latter being either inaccurately known or in many cases altogether unknown. The present annual supply of gold and of silver are ascertained with fair approach of certainty, but the future supplies are matter of doubt. The demand for the metals again involves wholly unknown quantities, depending partly upon the course of trade, but partly also upon the action of foreign peoples and governments, about which we can only form surmises.

The question is much complicated, again, by presenting a double problem -that regarding the next decade of years, and that regarding the more remote future. Possibly, a step which might be convenient during the course of the next five, ten, or fifteen years, would prove subsequently to be the mere postponement of a real and inevitable difficulty. When we pursue an inquiry of this complex and indeterminate kind, it resolves itself into endless hypotheses as to what will or will not happen if something else happens or does not happen. Nevertheless, it does not follow that, because statistical science fails us, we can come to no practical conclusion; on the contrary, from the very vagueness and uncertainty of

the subject may emerge a conviction that it is best to do nothing at all. A party of travellers lost in a fog will probably indulge in a great many speculations and arguments as to the possible paths and turnings they might take; but the wisest course may, nevertheless, be to stay where they are until the air becomes clear.

Looking at the question, in the first place, as a chronic one, that is, as regarding the constitution of monetary systems during centuries, it is indispensable to remember the fact, too much overlooked by disputants, that the values of gold and silver are ultimately governed, like those of all other commodities, by the cost of production. Unless clear reasons, then, can be shown, why silver should be more constant in its circumstances of production than gold, there is no ground for thinking that a bimetallic gold and silver money will afford a more steady standard of value than gold alone. The common argument that there will not be enough gold to carry on the trade of the world with, does not stand a moment's examination in this aspect. In the first place, if the value of gold rises, more gold will be produced, and the great number of gold-mining enterprises now being put forth may have some connection with this principle. In the second place, so long as sudden changes of supply and demand can be avoided, it is almost a matter of indifference, within

certain limits, whether there is much gold or little. Prices having once settled themselves, it is only a question of carrying a little more metal or a little less in your pocket. As Cantillon, and subsequently, but independently, Hume, remarked, if the money in the world were suddenly doubled or halved trade would go on as before, all prices being approximately doubled or halved. But of course the interests of creditors and debtors would be affected while the change was in progress.

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Now, as regards the chronic question, it is probable, though not certain, that the establishment of the bimetallic ratio of 15 to I would give a worse rather than a better standard of value, because the momentary standard is always the over-estimated metal. The double standard system gives an option to the debtor, so that if either gold or silver were in future years discovered in large quantities, the debtor would have the benefit. In the monometallic system there is no option, and all parties stake their interests on the single metal. these considerations must be added the historical fact that silver has during the last thousand years fallen in value more than gold. The ratio of values in the Middle Ages was about 10 to 1, fluctuating at times to 12 to 1. Later on silver became comparatively cheaper, and in the latter part of the last century, 15 to correctly represented the natural ratio. For some fifty years it was held pretty steadily at this point by the action of the French Currency Law. The unprecedented discoveries of gold in California, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere, reversed the course of prices for a time, but more lately the tendency to a preponderating fall of silver has reasserted itself. No doubt the events here so briefly recapitulated admit of endless discussion, and it would be impossible even to mention the volumes which have been written since the time of Locke upon the comparative steadiness of value of gold and silver. There emerges a certain degree of probability that silver is more subject to depreciation than gold, although both have, in the course of a thousand years, been very greatly depreciated in comparison with corn and the chief kinds of raw materials.

If this may be assumed to be the case, it follows that an attempt to reestablish the ratio 15 to 1 would tend to discourage the production of the dearer metal, gold, and to encourage the production of the more depreciated silver. We should be filling our pockets and our strong-boxes with a metal 15 times as heavy and 28 times as bulky as gold, proportionally to value, in order to get a worse medium of exchange, and a probably worse standard of value. Nor should we be approximating toward a better state of things. If gold is destined ultimately to be the general standard of value of all civilized nations, we must let it take its own natural value, and must allow the appreciation, if any, to tell upon the profits of mining. But the arbitrary reduction in the value of gold, involved in the present bimetallic project, would tend constantly to replace gold by silver; and unless it were desired actually to take silver as the medium of exchange, the last state of things would be worse than the first. It thus becomes plain that a bimetallic régime is not the means of approximating to a gold régime. On the contrary, it must either be a permanent régime, or it will sooner or later leave us with a vast stock of silver, liable to sudden depreciation, and a diminished stock of gold. In short, the project of M. Cernuschi is not a real panacea for our present troubles; it is only a mode of postponement leading to eventual aggravation.

When we turn to the temporary view of the subject, by which I mean the circumstances and interests of the next ten or fifteen years, the difficulties increase, chiefly because the data become wholly uncertain and contingent. The great principle of the cost of production fails us, because in the case of such durable commodities as gold and silver, the accumulated stock in hand is immensely greater than the annual production or consumption. It stands to reason, of course, that if several great nations suddenly decide that they will at all cost have gold currencies to be coined in the next few years, the annual production cannot meet the demand, which must be mainly supplied, if at all, out of stock. The result would, doubtless, be a tendency to a fall of prices. M. de

Laveleye, in one of the able articles which he is contributing to the Indépendance Belge, as an advocate of Cernuschiism, points to a fall of 30 per cent, which he thinks has already been occasioned by the demand for gold currency. He excites our imagination as to what may be expected to happen should Italy and other countries need gold for coining. But he omits to observe that the fall of 30 per cent. is probably due for the most part to the collapse of credit and speculation, a periodic event of which we have had many prior instances. The period of 1833 to 1844, especially, was one when no great wars and monetary operations were in progress; it was a period of active industrial and commercial progress. Yet the tables of prices given by Tooke, in his "History of Prices," and reduced in my paper on the Variation of Prices, communicated to the Statistical Society in May, 1865 (vol. xxviii. pp. 294-320), show that the average prices rose by 22 per cent between 1833 and 1839, and fell 25 per cent between this last year and 1844. So far as I have been able to discover, this great oscillation was entirely due to the general expansion of trade and credit, and to its subsequent collapse. Like causes have certainly been in operation in the last ten or twelve years; and if, as seems probable, we are now getting round by the lapse of time to the period when trade naturally revives, experience would prevent us from imagining that the late fall of values will be continued or repeated without an intervening rise. I am far from denying that if the Italian Government decide to carry into effect M. Luzzatti's threat of buying gold at all hazards, and if the like course be taken by the United States and France, not to speak of Germany, then there might be a considerable disturbance of values for a time. But is it likely that such proceedings will be taken by rational statesmen and rational parliaments? It is really too absurd to suppose that any country will insist upon immediately having a gold currency at any cost, regardless of the fact that it will thereby injure its own trade and commerce in the getting. The position is simply this. We have had for fifty years or more an abundant currency of

gold. Italy and some other countries have a paper currency. Suddenly becoming disgusted with paper, they say that unless we consent immediately to abandon our gold to a great extent, and take silver instead, they will insist upon buying our gold from us at whatever price we like to ask for it. We have so good a currency that, unless we consent to give it up willingly, they will insist on borrowing it from us. But surely in this case possession is nine points of the law. The largest stock of gold in the world is to be found in England, and many of the great gold-producing districts are to be found in the English colonies or dependencies. If these foreign nations insist upon having gold currencies, they must pay our price for gold, and they must in raising the price benefit us and our colonies, comparatively speaking.

When we consider what are the difficulties put forward as the ground of this bimetallic crotchet, we find that they arise either out of the sudden issue and withdrawal of paper money, or else out of the efforts of certain governments to get rid of silver. If the Italians suddenly want fifteen or twenty millions of specie, it is because they allowed their specie to be replaced by paper in former years, and they now discover the evils of a variable paper currency. Germany wants gold, because Prince Bismarck and his economists recognized the soundness of the principles on which Lord Liverpool fashioned our metallic currency. But because Germany has met with a temporary check in striving after a gold standard, is there any reason that we, who have had a gold standard with little interruption since the time of Sir Isaac Newton, should throw it up at the demand of M. Cernuschi? The difficulties of France simply consist in the fact, that, having had the law of the double standard previously in operation, she suspended the action of the law as soon as it began to occasion a return of silver. If all civilized countries were to adopt the double standard, they would just be inviting the growth of a silver currency, which France, with full experience of the use of silver, has practically decided to avoid.

Much that has recently been published on this subject, including the official

text of the draft resolution to be submitted to the Conference in Paris, implies that the French law establishing the double standard was intended to act as a regulator of the values of the metals according to the ratio of 15 to 1. The fact, however, is that no such idea seems to have prompted the law. Gaudin, who in the ninth year of the Revolution proposed the ratio of 15 to 1, did so upon the ground that this ratio was sufficiently near to that of the market values to allow coins of gold and silver to circulate side by side indifferently. In case the market ratio should alter after a time, he thought that the gold pieces could be melted and reissued. Sir Isaac Newton, again, when in 1717 he fixed the guinea at 21s., did so upon the ground that this was the closest convenient approximation to market rates. Only four months ago I quoted in the Contemporary Review (January, 1881, vol. xxxix. p. 73) the remarks of Cantillon upon this decision of Newton. Cantillon says:

"It is the market price which decides the proportion of the value of gold to that of silver. On this is based the proportion which we give to pieces of gold and silver money. If the market price varies considerably, it is necessary to alter the proportion of the coins. If we neglect to do this the circulation is thrown into confusion and disorder," etc. There is, in fact, no precedent for the views now pressed upon us. It is not even proposed to accept the prevailing ratio of the markets, but by an arbitrary convention to raise up silver to the place it held in the markets before, which involves bringing down gold so as to meet it about half-way. not undertake to deny that if a convention were agreed upon, and carried into formal effect, it might possibly raise silver to its former price of 59d. per ounce. The measure is one of so novel a character that it is almost impossible to say what would or would not happen. The attempt to force silver dollars into use in the United States has entirely failed, and it might fail even under a convention. It is quite conceivable that in the United Kingdom and the colonies the scheme would be defeated by the tacit refusal of the people to accept silver legal tender. A bank or a trades

I do

man might try to stand upon his legal rights, but the result would be a kind of commercial "Boycotting." Some formula would probably be discovered for contracting affairs out of the Double Legal Tender Law. At present there is no law to prevent people from making contracts in terms of gold or silver bullion, or tin or copper or corn, or whatever else they like, which is capable of precise definition. Even if the law were not thus circumvented, it might still be possible to make payments in gold a point of honor.

Then, again, the perpetual maintenance of this supposed convention is the only safeguard against the most serious inconvenience to some of the parties to

it. The convention would resemble a chain, the breaking of each link of which would throw an increased strain upon the other links. There exist, indeed, a good many international conventions relating to postal intercourse, extradition of criminals, copyright, and so forth; but in none of these cases would the breaking or suspension of the convention result in any ruinous consequences. There would be suspension of benefits rather than occasion of evil. But should war break out among some of the countries involved in the monetary convention, the probable effect would be to throw the mass of silver coin upon neutral nations. This might be done without any express breach of the convention, simply by the issue of paper money, a measure which we cannot pretend to consider unlikely, seeing that the chief difficulties of the present monetary situation arise out of efforts for the withdrawal of recent paper-money issues. It is true that the 8th Article of the proposed Convention enacts that "the fact of issuing or allowing to be issued paper money, convertible or otherwise, shall not relieve the State issuing it, or allowing it to be issued, from the above stipulated obligation of keeping its mints always open for the free mintage of the two metals at the ratio of 1 to 15." But as far as I can understand this "keeping of the mints open,' it seems probable that this article would be quite nugatory in time of war. If silver were depreciated 5 or 10 per cent, paper legal tender might easily be depreciated

20 or 30 per cent, and nobody would think of coining silver to pay their debts, when they could pay them so much more cheaply with paper. The issue of paper legal tender forms then, to the best of my belief, an indirect mode of abrogating the Convention without a distinct breach of faith. No government has ever yet resisted the temptation of resorting to paper under serious stress of war, and therefore, until a wiser and better state of things is brought about in the long course of time, it would seem impossible to fulfil the first condition of the bimetallic project-the making of an indefeasible convention.

When a measure is so clearly undesirable, it is hardly needful to point out the many difficulties which would arise in its operation. But there is one which presents itself to my mind as almost insuperable-namely, the confusion which would be produced in the masses of national and other debts contracted in terms of gold money. Silver is now about 13 per cent below its old customary value, compared with gold. If, then, debts contracted formerly in gold could be paid in silver, by the option of the bimetallic system, the claims of all creditors would be endangered to this extent, and in all probability would be depreciated to half that extent. Nor would the matter be much improved by enacting that old debts should be paid in gold as contracted, because gold, being forced into a fixed par with silver, would be depreciated, say, six per cent. The adoption of the bimetallic régime would be a coup d'état affecting the value of all past monetary contracts in a degree incapable of estimation; and¦although such a coup, or almost any other coup, might be advisable under certain circumstances, according to the maxim, salus populi suprema lex, yet it would be clearly impossible to unsettle the whole monetary contracts of the British nation and the British race, to the extent of some six per cent or more, for the sake of the exceedingly problematic, if not visionary, advantages to be derived from this proposed convention.

Though it thus appears to be altogether out of the question that the English Government should contemplate

the abandonment of the gold standard, there are two or three minor measures of a temporary nature which might perhaps be adopted to relieve the disturbed relations of the precious metals. There would probably be little or no inconvenience in raising the limit of legal currency of silver coin in the United Kingdom to five pounds instead of two pounds as at present. This change would probably prove to be a merely nominal one, unless bankers and others could be induced to pay out silver coin more largely than at present. The Mint gains so handsome a profit upon the coinage of silver money at present that the opportunity might well be taken to throw as much silver into circulation as possible; but unless the habits of the people be changed it would not stop in circulation. There is, in fact, at present a very clear disinclination on the part of the public to take any larger amount of silver money than is necessary. It is an almost unknown thing in England for any tradesman to give as much as two pounds in silver change. No customer is expected to take more than ten, or at the most twenty shillings in silver, and any surplus of silver receipts is paid into the banking account, and the general balance of the district is eventually returned to the Bank of England. England. It is very doubtful whether Mr. Seyd's scheme of a four-shilling piece or any other scheme would overcome this fixed habit, which is moreover a reasonable habit.

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It will easily be seen that in this article I do not pretend to enter into the complexities of the subject, nor to answer the numerous arguments adduced in favor of the bimetallic project. literature and statistics of the subject are of an almost interminable extent. If any reader wants to learn what he has to read before he can be considered to have mastered this subject, let him refer to A Partial List of Modern Publications on the Subject of Money," prepared by Mr. Horton, and printed among the Appendices to the Official American Report on the International Monetary Conference, held in Paris, in August, 1878. This volume is replete with information on the subject. But my contention is that to wade through