TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 161 



On the Present Export of Silver to the East. By Prof. R. H. Walsh, LL.D. 



So far back as the time when Pliny termed it the sink of the precious metals, silver 

 was a favourite article of export to the East. It has continued so since ; but the trade 

 of late has assumed an extraordinary magnitude. In tlie five years prior to the present 

 over £22,000,000 worth of silver have been exported (o the East through England 

 alone, and from other countries a similar movement has been in operation. The 

 export in 1855 was £6,400,000; and this year it is proceeding at the rate of over 

 £9,000,000 per annum, judging from the returns that have been published for the first 

 four months. Unlike the old movement, the pi'eaent cannot be permanent. The 

 former was seldom more than might be accounted for as the distribution of silver to 

 some of its chief consumers — the nations of the East — according as new supplies were 

 raised elsewhere. It was, in fact, the ordinary movement from the producer to the 

 consumer. But now silver goes faster to the East than it is produced throughout the 

 world. Hence the process cannot be permanent, but must come to an end as soon 

 as the re-distribution of the old stock has been effected ; for the annual production of 

 silver is only about £8,000,000, and since the export to the East through England 

 alone is at the rate of over £9,000,000, it follovps that it cannot be the new supplies of 

 silver which meet that demand and all others for the same metal, but there must be 

 some auxiliary fund to be drawn upon. Such a fund is furnished by a cessation in 

 the demand for silver in several countries which before employed it most largely, but 

 now use gold instead. In a paper brought before this Association at Glasgow last 

 September, I had occasion to notice that silver, which used to be coined in France and 

 the United States at an average rate of £4,000,000 per annum, is now little employed, 

 while much of the old coin of that metal is melted down and exported. In France, it 

 is said, that in one year, 1853, so much as ,£12,000,000 was disposed of in this man- 

 ner, and that the operation has since been pi-oceeding at a still greater rate. All this 

 acts in the same way as if a silver California had been discovered. No one thinks it 

 extraordinary that gold is exported on a large scale from the auriferous regions to the 

 various nations which use that metal ; but it is quite as natural to suppose that when 

 large supplies of silver are thrown upon the market (it matters not whether newly 

 extracted from the earth, or just taken from the melting-pot), they would find their 

 way to those places where silver is generally employed. India, China, and other East- 

 ern nations come under this description, and hence the late extraordinary exportation. 

 As this cause is a novel one, there is an inclination on the part of some who call them- 

 selves practical men to adopt any other rather than it. Experience gives no instance 

 of any such, and hence those who look to their personal experience alone are completely 

 at fault when discussing this question. Some talk of the balance of trade; others of 

 an increased importation of tea and silk from China ; and a third set of investigators 

 enunciate details of the machinery of the foreign exchanges by which the transmission 

 is effected. But such persons forget that the export of silver is just as likely in the 

 abstract to be the cause as the effect of the "balance," or "increased importation," in 

 which they dogmatically assume it originated ; and that, as for the details of the foreign 

 exchanges, they merely tell us how and not why the export takes place. Yet all this 

 is said while the question presents no difficulty whatsoever, when two facts are noticed 

 in juxtaposition, — one, the great cessation in the demand for silver in countries which 

 employ a double standard ; the other, the circumstance that the Eastern nations 

 habituallj' use silver on a large scale, especially in their currency. After that there 

 is nothing to be said to complete the explanation, except to call to mind that when 

 the supply of any article is unusually great compared with the number of consumers, 

 it must find its way to these latter in quantities proportionally auj'mented; and that 

 such is the case at present with the article silver, the principal consumers of which 

 are the nations of the East. 



Concludhiff Address. By R. Monckton Milnes, M.P. 



In the absence of Lord Stanley, Mr. Monckton Milnes, a Vice-PresidentoftheSection, 

 gave a summary of the proceedings of the Section. He remarked on the small proportion 

 of papers that had been read bearing on political economy when compared with the 

 papers on other subjects. They were, no doubt, aware that there were French and 



1856. 11 



