BIMETALLISM. OOy 



respect, has repaid about £100,000,000 of her debt within the last 

 twenty years, but now actually has to draw from her people 20 per 

 cent, more of the produce of their industry than when the debt 

 ■stood at the higher amount. It is not to be wondered at that a 

 powerful section of the community now seeks to let its voice be 

 heard in behalf of a change in our financial system. It is rather 

 surprising that action has been so long delayed. The conservative 

 character of the national mind, the mistaken estimate of the 

 superior utility of lyjold, and, above all, the selfish grasping of 

 money-lending capitalists, who see in the advance of gold an 

 unearned increment to their wealth, and who hide their cupidity 

 imder the delusive cry of cheap bread for the people, and have 

 endeavored to heap ridicule on the heads of bimetallists, in place 

 of meeting them with sound argument, these have hitherto been 

 able to delay the movement in favor of a return to the combined 

 standard, and the intricate nature of the currency question has 

 retarded its advocacy amongst the large section of the community, 

 who prefer to let others think for them, and rely more on assertion 

 than argument. The labor leaders have, as a rule, until lately, 

 held aloof from the movement, no doubt under the conviction that 

 wages paid in gold, under an appreciating standard, is equivalent 

 to a rise. But the stern lessons of the past few years have led 

 them to see that their welfare is bound up in the general prosperity 

 of the country, and that full employment and good wages only 

 accompany prosperous trade and commerce. The labor unions in 

 England are now largely members of the Bimetallic League. 



CONDITIOX OF THE COLONIES. 

 If Eujiland, owing to its immense accumulated wealth, and to 

 her foreign investments, from which she is receiving the interest 

 in enhanced gold values, sufi'ers on that account less than other 

 communities, her colonies, in this respect being borrowers, have 

 had their burdens largely increased. Having to prosecute their 

 industries by the aid of foreign capital, their indebtedness, public 

 and private, is greater per head of the population than that of any 

 people under the sun. The question, therefore, is to them of 

 paramount interest ; yet they are scarcely alive to it. The fallacy 

 that, as large producers of gold, their interest lay in maintaining 

 the gold standard held sway during all these years. They have 

 now to realise the enormously preponderating interest which 

 attaches to their production of wool, wheat, silver, and copper. 

 The export of gold for the whole uf Australasia, amounting to the 

 sum of £6,000,000 sterling, has no doubt been exchangeable for 

 an increasing amount of imports, but to counterbalance this the 

 other staple exports to the value of £46,000,000 have been subject 

 to an annual depreciation, and, as interest on our debt has to be 

 paid in gold, it follows that the proportion of exports required for 

 the discharge of interest is ever on the increase. The standard on 



