surd idea one frequently encounters, that Asia will dump silver upon the American mints and carry off gold, it is hardly necessary to examine this fallacy. It is for the objectors to show why Asia should give the metal, which to her is alone money, in order to buy the other metal which is not money, and why also the white metal should be withdrawn from the hoards of the Orient at that moment when it appreciates, in order that it may be exchanged for the yellow metal, which has just depreciated almost, onehalf in terms of rupees.

"The present Lord Aldenham (then Mr. Hucks Gibbs), in his evidence before the Currency Commission in 1866, declared that, in his judgment. America with open mints could maintain the partiy without help. There is no one who has had a larger practical experience of exchange problems than Mr. Gibbs; there is no one whose opinion is more entitled to respect. And since that evidence was given what have we seen? On a certain Monday in June, 1893, we saw the two metals at a parity of 1 to 24; on the Friday of that week the parity had become 1 to 301⁄2. And why? Because Indian mints had been closed to free coinage. Now, it is not possible to argue seriously that while the closing of the Indian mints had thus enormously reduced the gold price of silver, yet the reopening of those mints would have failed to bring about a rise; so that it is fair to assume that if between Monday and Friday the ratio fell from 1 to 24 to 1 to 30%, then between Friday and Tuesday, had the Indian mints been reopened. the ratio would have risen from 1 to 30% to 1 to 24. And supposing, further, that on the Tuesday the United States had accepted free coinage at 1 to 16, is it inherently improbable that such a vast country, with such a boundless exporting capacity, could have lifted silver to 581⁄2d.?

"Permit me to recapitulate. The difference between open mints and closed mints in India has been demonstrated by the experiment of 1893 to be silver at 301⁄2d. and silver at 381⁄2d., and, this having been ascertained. is it the folly, is it the lunacy, is it the dishonesty that the New York press so glibly declares it, if we venture to hold that the difference between open mints in the United States and closed mints in the United States is the entire difference between 382d. and 58%1⁄2d. In other words, if India contributes a 25 per cent. lift to silver by giving it free coinage, why can not America contribute a further 50 per cent.? Why can not she lift the ratio from 1 to 24 to 1 to 16? What, permit me to ask, with much respect. is your view as to this? We are aware that you favor bimetallism, cand not merely 'by and by metallism.' Either a monetary union over a strictly limited area will establish the parity, or, if not, then the whole system is chimerical; because if bimetallism needs to be universal, then, also, it follows that our opponents are correct in declaring that the system is in practicable, because the defection of one or two warring nations would serve to destroy it.

"The new French Prime Minister, M. Meline, on Saturday last, whe: pointing to the rapid spread and acceptance by experts of the bimetalli theorem, declared that:

'What alone is now needed is the "electric spark." Such an electric spark may very well prove to be a free coinage plank in the National Democratic Convention, which meets at Chicago on July 7. For even if the Republican party should elect its President, still that plank, unless countered by a similar move in the Republican party, will certainly secure to the Democratic party the control until 1900 of the all-important Senate; whereas, on the other hand, the monometallist counsels of Mr. Cleveland and Secretary Carlisle, should they dominate the party at Chicago, will both leave in that party the record of a disgraceful surrender and will leave of that party for a generation to come not one stone standing upon another.

"Such is the great exchange crisis which to-day confronts the whole world of trade. Its effects upon international trade, still dimly perceived, are probably infinitely greater and more complicated than any of us at all appreciate. We have seen with the great rise in gold premium at Buenos Ayres since 1890 the wheat area in that country increased from 2,990,000 acres in 1891 to 7,141,000 acres in 1895; while in the same period the wheat exports jumped up from less than 2,000,000 qrs. to nearly 8,000,000 qrs. Here is a competition which, while the press is shouting for 'honest money,' has made Kansas and Minnesota not less desolate than Essex and Lincolnshire. On the other hand, we saw, in 1893, an artificial, a manipulated, rise in the exchanges between India and the Far East strike the milling industries in Bombay as by lightning, so that 30,000 operatives there were thrown out of work in a few weeks, while yarn exports from Bombay fell off one-third, and the Government of India was obliged to come to England because of the exchange disturbance and the contraction of exports, exactly as America has to-day to come to England because of the contraction of her exports to borrow gold. We have seen these experiments in exchange, we have seen experts, such as Mr. Hermann Schmidt, exactly foretell, in evidence before Royal Commissions, the results which were to follow from these experiments; and yet silly people there are who still declare that steady exchanges with four-fifths of mankind are immaterial, because 'international trade is merely international barter!'

"Let me only add in conclusion that Europe and America are indeed to be congratulated if, because of the intuitions of the common people in the Western Republic, we are now very near the dawn of better days. At a time when political leaders the world over are, as never before in history, disappointed and disgraced. the Western nations unguided and unguarded, groping in the dark as to the magnitude of the issues involved, have come within an ace of being routed and their industries decimated by that exchange crisis which has given their silver money to our Oriental competitors at half price. If, then, we succeed in evading the greatest race danger with which we have ever been confronted, we shall owe our escape, not to our statesmen, who have failed us, but to the detection of pseudo-liberalism, false economies, and half-truths (worse than any lies) by the great American nation. Not without reason did Lincoln declare of that nation: 'You may fool some of them all the time, but not all of them all the time.' 'Every one,'

said Lincoln again, 'knows more than any one!' an utterance which, no doubt, his successor, the present occupant of the White House, and his 'cuckoo' Cabinet consider frankly blasphemous.

"Yours, faithfully,

"MORETON FREWEN.

"White's Club, London, May 25, 1896."

Reprinted from the Financial News Friday, May 29, 1896.

Mr. M. Cernuschi.

(From the Galveston News.)

In a recent article published in the Paris Economist, M. Cernuschi, perhaps the most distinguished international bimetallist in the world, after having long opposed the advocates of independent free coinage in the United States, announces, in the most emphatic terms, that were he now a citizen of the United States, despairing of international agreement because of England's obstruction, in view of the great injury inflicted on this country by its present monetary standard and that of European powers, he would unhesitatingly join in the demand for immediate, free, unlimited, and independent coinage of silver and gold at 16 to 1 by the United States. With those acquainted with his writings and career, who know to what confidence and consideration his opinion on the issue now before us is entitled, this communication will have a most profound influence. Having recently had the pleasure of reading M. Cernuschi's "Nomisma," containing his testimony before the United States Monetary Commission in 1877, greatly attracted by the mastery he evinced of the subject, the clearness and consistency of his views, and the nobility of the sentiments that pervaded them, I myself longed, without hope of realization, to learn how his opinions had been affected by present conditions in the United States. Imagine, then, my surprise and gratification at finding the other day a republication of this late article passing through the American press. He adds his invaluable testimony that the present policy is “ruinous" in its effects on the United States, "especially for its native producers;" that (1) "it has diminished by half, on American territory, the value in gold of all the national products subject to competition" with silver producing countries, as cotton and cereals; (2) it has doubled the real burden of debts contracted abroad in gold, since double the quantity of American products is now required to discharge the annual liability arising from those debts."

The immediate issue before the American people is between the single gold standard and the free and independent coinage by the United States, but as the latter is the only hope of international bimetallism, the real issue is between gold and gold and silver as ultimate redemption and legal-tender money. Says the eminent writer above quoted, "the father of international bimetallism," as he is everywhere called, in avowing what his actions would be at this juncture if a citizen of the United States, "it would be a step in the direction of bimetallism; for, under the regime of the new standard, the productive powers of the United States would receive so enormous an im

pulse, and this development would have such a disastrous effect upon the economic and financial interest of England and other European nations now governed by the single gold standard, that it may be confidently predicted in advance that the course of events would force the adoption of international bimetallism as the only true solution even upon those who to-day deny the possibility and efficacy of it."

A. J. Balfour.

In a speech to the Bankers of London, in August, 1893, as cabled to the New York World, Mr. A. J. Balfour, First Lord of the Treasury, but then a leader of the Conservative party in Parliament, said:

"We desire that we should find the most suitable measure of value practicable and possible, though I have no hesitation now in asserting that if you can not attain this absolutely theoretical perfection, it is better for the community at large that the standard should be depreciating rather than appreciating. Standard stability is the ideal, but if it can not be reached the worst alternative of all is that your standard should be a steadily appreciating one.

"If that proposition be granted, I ask whether you think it probable, or even possible, that a general single gold standard should satisfy this requirement of stability, or at all events satisfy it as much as a double standard. Assuming a double standard possible, do you not think that the requirement of stability would be better attained by it than by the maintenance of a single gold standard?

"What are the causes which interfere with the stability of a standard? "The first cause undoubtedly is the alteration of the conditions under which the metal is produced. New discoveries, exhaustion of mines, new processes, new inventions, all are influences which either augment or diminish the supply of gold in the world and must ultimately have the effect of altering that standard. If you have a double standard, if you can count for your standard of value not merely upon the gold supply, but upon it plus the silver supply, it is evident that any oscillation or cause of change is diminished because it is spread over a wider area.

"The second great cause of variations in the value of a standard arises from the pressure put upon it by the growth of commerce, population, and transactions. If the world is to grow in population and commerce, each increment of population, each augmentation of commerce throws a greater strain upon the standard by which the transactions of the community are measured. If this strain is thrown upon a gold-plus-silver standard, any given change will produce much less variation in value than if confined to either gold alone or to silver alone.

"The third cause of variation I take to be legislation. There are some people who, apparently, are of the opinion that legislation ought to have nothing to do with the question of the value of a standard. That is entirely

a delusion. The very term ‘legal tender' implies that the tender is the creation of law, and because a creation of law an artificial creation of the community.

*

"Surely, if it can be shown that, as regards its stability, its accessibility, its internationality, a double standard is incontrovertibly better than a single standard, and that the evils which follow from a single standard are not obscure and theoretical, but menacing and insistent, touching every interest and every class, I have at all events made out a strong prima facie case, which every man should honestly examine for himself. Whether popular objections to a double standard are or are not well founded, it appears that there has been a Nemesis which has followed upon extreme adherence to what they are pleased to describe as orthodox doctrine.

"An object lesson may be obtained by turning to the recent history of India. I am not going to say a word of blame or criticism in regard to the Indian Government or of the Government at home. The Government of India, by closing the mints in India, has made the rupee an artificial coin. has made its value depend, not upon the cost of production, but upon the supply as determined by the executive.

"What has always been a most dangerous, if not an immoral, condition of things was that the State should not content itself with determining what the legal standard should be, but should itself regulate the supply of that standard.

"I understand that the proposal of the Indian Government is that a silver rupee can never rise above the value of 1s. 4d. (about 33 cents). But while that is the superior limit, the inferior limit evidently is the value of the uncoined silver-and what the value of that may be after the action of the Indian Government and the probable action of the American Government it will take a much better prophet than I to tell you. The net result is that a man who owns uncoined silver no longer owns what is practically legal tender; he owns a depreciated commodity, and what relation his assets would now bear to his debis is a matter of speculation.

"We hitherto have been accustomed to boast of our isolation in matters of currency. Now we find ourselves trembling with apprehension at the course which may be pursued by this or that government over which we have no control. We rightly claimed that we were the great commercial community of the world, trading with all countries, covering the seas with our fleets, taking toll of all nations having commercial intercourse with all nations.

“We now find that the world is divided into gold-using and silver-using countries, that the whole mechanism of exchange between these countries is upset, that merchants who deal with South America or Mexico or China are hampered in their transactions, and find doubt hanging over every element which should determine their course of conduct.

"We hitherto boasted ourselves as the upholders of the doctrine of free trade. We now find ourselves-through a system of currency in which, I fear,