nation. With his authority too much. weakened to render another session endurable, and after several defeats at isolated elections throughout the country, the Minister dissolved Parliament, and his rival, for the first time in his career, found imself at the head of a majority in both Houses of Parliament, strong in the confidence of his Sovereign and in his unbounded popularity throughout the country.

Supreme political power only arrived when age had greatly impaired his physical powers. The country, however, was weary of incessant activity, and the septuagenarian Premier was not urged forward, either from within or from without, toward sensational legislation. He left the conduct of some useful and necessary measures to his colleagues, and reserved to himself that control over the whole home and foreign administration which had been so long neglected. Ireland was pacified with the removal of all restrictions upon the issue of the Habeas Corpus writ, and by other relaxations of the restrictive code of the former Ministry. The first three years of his Premiership were spent in the House of Commons. The withdrawal of Mr. Gladstone from the post of leader of the Opposition was followed very shortly afterward by the first mutterings of the Eastern Question, in the shape of risings in Bosnia and the Herzegovina. The purchase of the Suez Canal shares, which has since turned out to be a great financial as well as political success, and the evident intention to assert our interests in the East, produced an immense accession of popularity to the Government; and during the year 1876 the debates bore witness to the oncoming division of opinion which was to bring Mr. Gladstone back in full vigor and activity to public life almost as soon as he announced his determination to finally quit it. In August, 1876, Mr. Disraeli became Earl of Beaconsfield, a name destined speedily to become even more famous than that which was laid aside; for the three last years of this celebrated Ministry form the culminating point of Disraeli's life. His power was not in the slightest degree affected by his transference from one House to the other. In fact, his authority had always rested more upon the sway which he exercised

over his colleagues, the House of Parliament, and the country, through its debates, than upon any enthusiasm which he created among the constituencies, and which, however deep-seated, was not so violent and impulsive as that which Mr. Gladstone at times excites. Lord Chatham is, we believe, the only other instance of a Prime Minister passing from one House to the other during the existence of his Ministry; and in his case power was practically lost by the step. Lord Beaconsfield's elevation did not come a moment too soon. physical powers were no longer equal to the work of the House of Commons, and he was soon to be plunged into the vortex of European politics when they were at their wildest. There was public need of all that "detachment" of intellect with which he was credited, and it was well that he should be withdrawn from all lesser distractions.

His

The events of these memorable years are too recent to justify recapitulation. The chief personal incidents were the withdrawal at a critical moment of Lord Derby, the friend of twenty-five years, and son of the illustrious statesman whose name was so long associated with that of Disraeli; and the accession to the Foreign Office of Lord Salisbury, and the mission of both statesmen to the Congress of Berlin. The former of these incidents occasioned a touching tribute to the memory of a celebrated friendship, but also it enabled Lord Beaconsfield at length to stand forth as the champion of the public law of Europe, and boldly to insist that the arrangements of San Stefano should be submitted to readjustment by the Signatories of the Treaty of Paris. To that treaty, confirmed in 1871, the British Minister had always appealed. He had been prevented by the agitation of 1876 and the other circumstances of the time from offering armed resistance to Russian aggression; but with the fleet stationed near the Bosphorus, Indian troops at Malta, votes of money by overwhelming majorities in Parliament, he plainly indicated that the Treaty of San Stefano must, in order to be binding, be imposed by force of arms upon Great Britain as well as upon Turkey. From this task Russia shrank, and the equitable readjustment of the San Stefano

stipulations, to which she was forced to submit, resulted in the Treaty of Berlin. That treaty will remain, we hope, as a complete international settlement of the south-eastern territories of Europe, the maintenance of which will be understood to mean peace, and the disturber of which will incur the guilt and responsibility of war.

The greatest event in the life of Lord Beaconsfield was his visit to Berlin as the First Plenipotentiary of Great Britain; the greatest day was probably his triumphal entrance into London after his return. During the Congress, and in his journey toward it, he never ceased for an instant to be the great attraction. And in Paris he is credited with having deterred Germany in 1875 from renewing the Franco-German war. The Times correspondent at Paris writes: "He filled so large a part in European preoccupation, that his disappearance has produced something like the impression of the disappearance of a dynasty." The correspondent of the same paper at Berlin writes: "The deceased statesman was regarded as the restorer of the British prestige on the Continent," and speaks emphatically of the high honor in which he was held. Two anecdotes of Prince Bismarck may be quoted on their authority; one, that in his private cabinet a portrait of the Prince's wife hangs on the right hand of that of the Emperor, while that of Lord Beaconsfield hangs on the left in recognition of the prominent part which the deceased statesman played at the Congress, and of the high estimation in which his great qualities were held. Another is, that the Prince used these remarkable words, in reference to the firm stand which Lord Beaconsfield had made in vindication of the rights of Great Britain :

Schouvaloff and Beaconsfield,' he is related to have said, are the two leading figures in this Congress, and I am delighted with watching them. Beaconsfield has wonderful presence of mind, is versatile and energetic, lets nothing excite him, and has admirably defended his cause. English pride is safe in his hands and when the negotiations were broken off on the 21st of June, he was manfully leading his country to war. It was then that I intervened. Both he and Schouvaloff have done their duty, and have saved their country from war. My only merit was bringing them to

gether at a moment when they could not themselves make any advances."""

But Lord Beaconsfield needed no foreign tribute to recommend his conduct to the gratitude and approval of his countrymen. He had reached the zenith of his reputation, and hardly any career in history contains a prouder episode or a more exalted fame. He had saved his country from war, and had given peace to Europe; and the world admitted that Great Britain had reconquered her old ascendancy on the Continent. Had Lord Beaconsfield dissolved Parliament on his return, he might have obtained a renewed lease of power; but it is, in our judgment, more to his permanent credit that he did not. The result of a dissolution is at any time a most uncertain thing to forecast; and he would not have acted fairly by his allies, his supporters, and the peace of Europe, if he had incurred the risk of transferring to the Liberal leaders, in the impracticable position which they then occupied, the task of presiding over the execution of the treaty. The same firmness which had won the treaty was needed to secure its execution, and not till the last Russian had quitted the Turkish empire, and the main points of the treaty had been carried out, did Lord Beaconsfield dissolve. From the date of his triumphal entry into London, Lord Beaconsfield, as we can now see, entered upon the period of his decline in power. When an administration is growing six years old, the least change in its fortunes or in its luck is likely to prove fatal. The isolated elections still went in his favor, and continued to do so till the dissolution; and to the last-as long as the natural term of his Ministry extended-Lord Beaconsfield was cordially, and even enthusiastically, supported. His letter to the Duke of Marlborough, the last State paper that came from his hand, spoke to the country in tones of dignity and firmness, in all respects worthy of being the last official utterances of a great parliamentary Premier.

Exactly a year elapsed from Lord Beaconsfield's resignation to his death. He died on the anniversary of his delivering up the seals of office to the Queen. The characteristic cheerfulness with which he bore the reverse was

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

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.

Now, as regards the chronic question, it is probable, though not certain, that the establishment of the bimetallic ratio of 15 to 1 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. To 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 I 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