558 PROCEEDIXGS OF SECTION G. 



2. The gold and silver to be coined into legal tender money. 



The quantity of pure silver in the silver coins to bear 

 such projDortion to the quantity of pure gold in the gold 

 coins as may be agreed upon by the high contracting 

 powers. 



3. The debtor, saving any f)revious stipulation to the contrary, 



to have the right to pny his debts in coins of either 

 metal, at his pleasure. 



RESULT. 



One result of the complications which have arisen in consequence 

 of the demonetisation of silver is that the subject, in the aspect of 

 the sufficiency of the ciirrency, is now attracting a large share of 

 public attention. Economists have iurnished the world with 

 treatises on money, on banking, on wealth and capital. The 

 operations and the instruments of credit, and their dependence on 

 the basis of the metallic currency, have all been handled ; but 

 except by a few men, who have been described as doctrinaires and 

 visionaries, the dangers arising from the demonetisation of silver 

 have not been discussed or realised. Even such well-known econo- 

 mists as Jevon and Bagehot, from whose theories bimetallists draw 

 their most convincing arguments, shrank from adopting the con- 

 clusions to Avhich those theories led up, and gave it as their 

 opinion that the probability of a rise in the purchasing power of 

 gold was a matter of speculation. Both believed that the transient 

 recovery that silver made in 1876 was a sign of a permanent turn 

 of the tide, so little did they realise the momentous character of the 

 fall in values which from small beginnings has already reached a 

 divergence of 40 per cent. 



The advocates of bimetallism are no longer thought visionaries. 

 The subject has taken hold of the minds of the best thinkers in 

 Europe ; some of our ablest statesmen are its advocates. The 

 chambers of commerce throughout Great Britain agitate for its 

 adoption, and the people generally, from the highest to the lowest, 

 alarmed at the persistent depreciation of all commodities, are pre- 

 paring to demand the only solution yet presented to their view. 



EFFECTS OF DEMONETISATIOX. 



We have witnessed during the past twenty years a gradual and 

 continuous decline in the price of silver. During the same period 

 the price of commodities generally has declined as continuously, 

 and persistently ; and as unaccountably, except on the ground above 

 stated. 



The declines in silver and commodities have been simultaneous, 

 and almost to a like extent. At the commencement of the present 

 year the price of silver was 3s. 3d. per ounce, commodities, 

 according to the most reliable statistics and the indices of the 

 economic journals, having fallen 30 per cent. — an equivalent ratio 



