THE PRESENT COMMERCIAL CRISIS. 497 



effect of a depreciated currency upon the external commerce of a large 

 country. It is often asserted of India that the depreciation of silver 

 has given it a great advantage, because it can sell its goods at a price 

 which calculated in gold would be less than that charged by compet- 

 ing countries ; but, on the other hand, nearly all the finance officers of 

 India and England are suffering from the embarrassments inflicted 

 upon the Indian treasury by this very decline. If we admit the prin- 

 ciple that a depreciated currency is an advantage to a country, we 

 should conclude that Russia is never more prosperous than when its 

 ruble declines, the Argentine Republic and Brazil than when their 

 forced paper loses another fraction of its nominal value ; and that 

 those countries, like Italy and the United States, which exerted them- 

 selves to pass from the regime of paper money and resume specie pay- 

 ments, committed a false step, because, in substituting a strong and 

 stable currency for a weak and variable one, they made exportation 

 more difficult. It may be acknowledged that a slow and gradual de- 

 preciation of the value of money may at first aid to a certain extent in 

 the development of exportations. But this is only a transitory phe- 

 nomenon. All prices will soon come to a level, and salaries and wages 

 will rise ; and the temporary advantages accruing to producers and 

 exporters will- vanish. If the foreign commerce of India has sensibly 

 expanded within the last fifteen years, we can point out more palpa- 

 ble, precise, and certain causes for the increase than the fall of silver, 

 in the development of the network of railways, the operation of the 

 Suez Canal, with the continual reductions in its tolls, and the cheap- 

 ening of marine freights. Railroads and steamboats are the great lev- 

 elers of prices. Add to these the effect of all the improved processes 

 for loading and unloading, such as grain-elevators and all the new 

 port facilities, and we shall find in this whole of circumstances so va- 

 ried and yet so concordant a cause for the cheapening of goods much 

 less problematical than the depreciation of silver. 



There is another consideration to be taken account of when we 

 refer the fall in prices to the diminished production of gold. It is not 

 correct to suppose that it is indispensable for the maintenance of 

 prices that the quantity of the precious metals which form the stand- 

 ard shall be increased in proportion to the extension and volume of 

 commerce. Numerous recent discoveries contribute to permit econ- 

 omy in the circulation of the precious metals. Submarine telegraphs, 

 for example, more exact knowledge of the ocean-currents, the cutting 

 of isthmuses, and improvements in the steam-engine are diminishing 

 the use of these metals in international commerce. If we wish to send 

 a million dollars in bullion from America to England, it will only 

 take six or seven days now against the twelve or fifteen days that it 

 took twenty years ago. Specie can be sent now from Australia to 

 Great Britain in thirty-five days, where it took ninety days a quarter 

 of a century ago. This shortening of the time required for the trans- 



TOL. XXIX. 32 



