60 



BI-METALLIO STANDARD. 



Stephanie, daughter of the King of the Bel- 

 gians, was married, May 10th, to the Crown- 

 Prini'o Kudolph of Austria. (See AUSTHIA.) 



The Minister-President, Bounder de Mals- 

 broek, was transferred in January from Copen- 

 hagen and Stockholm to Washington. 



The German commercial treaty of 1865 was 

 renewed, and is to continue in force until one 

 year after one of the contracting powers has 

 given notice of dissolving it. 



Count Auguste Van der Straaten-Ponthoz 

 was transferred from his post at the Hague to 

 succeed the venerable Baron Nothomb (see 

 OBITUARIES) at Berlin. Baron d'Anethan, for- 

 mer Belgian representative at the Vatican, was 

 appointed minister to the Hague. 



The latest law for military organization pro- 

 vides for an army of 46,277 men, including 

 all officers, police, and non-combatants, with 

 10,014 horses and 204 guns, in time of peace ; 

 and for a war force, of 103,683 men, not count- 

 ing officers, gendarmery, etc., with 13,800 

 horses and 240 guns. The army comprises 18 

 line regiments of infantry, with 3 line and 1 

 reserve battalion each, and 1 rifle regiment 

 with 4 line and 2 reserve battalions, every bat- 

 talion consisting of 4 companies, and the com- 

 pany of 100 men in peace and 225 in war, ex- 

 clusive of officers. The cavalry consists of 8 

 regiments, of 4 line and 1 reserve squadron 

 each, the squadron having 120 horses in time 

 of peace and 154 in war. The field-artillery 

 consists of 2 regiments with and 2 without 

 mounted batteries, each regiment containing 10 

 batteries of 6 guns, with 94 men and 64 horses 

 in time of peace and 155 men and 152 horses 

 on a war-footing. There are 3 regiments of 

 standing artillery of 18 batteries, each battery 

 being manned with 78 men in peace and 176 

 in war; 1 engineer regiment of 3 battalions 

 with 10 companies each, 85 men strong in 

 peace and 300 strong in war. The Belgian 

 Citizens' Guard, or militia, has 120,000 men en- 

 rolled, of which 30,000 are active. The King, 

 in an address on the occasion of the opening ot 

 the new dock at Ghent, declared that the se- 

 cure establishment of national military de- 

 fenses ought to keep even pace with the ad- 

 vancement in material prosperity, referring to 

 the development of a strong military reserve, 

 which has been the aim of the Belgian Govern- 

 ment for many years. 



BI-METALLIC STANDARD. The Inter- 

 national Monetary Congress, which was held 

 in connection with the Paris Exposition of 

 1878, having produced no practical result, the 

 Government of France endeavored during the 

 two years following to initiate a movement for 

 bringing the nations together for some more 

 formal action. France and other members of 

 the Latin Union still maintained the double, 

 or bi-metallic, monetary standard ; Great Brit- 

 ain persisted in the single gold standard, ex-, 

 cept for India, where silver constituted the 

 currency; Germany, having recently adopted 

 the gold standard, continued to dispose of her 



surplus stock of silver ; and the United States, 

 which had resumed the coinage of legal-tender 

 silver dollars, was apprehensive of derange- 

 ment of her financial system by a further de- 

 cline in the value of silver. France and the 

 United States were disposed to adhere to bi- 

 metallism, but it was generally recognized that 

 some broader international agreement was nec- 

 essary in order to maintain the relative value 

 of the metals and give it stability. Great 

 Britain showed no disposition to yield its sin- 

 gle-standard policy, but was interested in sus- 

 taining the value of silver on account of its ex- 

 tensive use as currency in her Eastern colonies. 

 Germany had given no evidence of a desire to 

 recede from its action of 1873, but was appar- 

 ently willing to discuss the subject, and to sub- 

 mit her sales of silver to restrictions. Austria 

 was inclined to a cautious policy, dependent 

 on the future action of Germany and Great 

 Britain. 



An effort was made in 1880 by France to 

 secure a monetary conference at Paris in No- 

 vember of that year. This effort failed, but 

 the co-operation of the United States was ob- 

 tained, and on the 8th of February the Foreign 

 Secretary was able to announce, in a council of 

 ministers, that the Government of the United 

 States had agreed to the proposition of France 

 for an International Monetary Conference to 

 consider the question of a more general adop- 

 tion of the double standard of gold and silver. 

 Invitations would be addressed to the other 

 powers, and the question then was whether 

 it should be in the name of France alone or 

 France and the United States jointly. Subse- 

 quently, early in March, a joint note of the 

 two Governments was addressed in identical 

 terms to their ministers in other countries, to 

 be by them communicated to the several gov- 

 ernments to which they were accredited. The 

 note was as follows : 



The Government of the Eepublic of France and the 

 Government of the United States, having exchanged 

 views upon the subject of a conference between the 

 powers principally interested in the question of estab- 

 lishing internationally the use of gold and silver as bi- 

 metallic money and securing fixity of relative value be- 

 tween those metals, and finding themselves in accord as 

 to the usefulness and importance of such a conference, 

 and as to the time and place at which the same should 

 be held, have the honor now to invite the Govern- 

 ments of to take part in a conference by such 



delegates as each government may appoint, to be held 

 at Paris on Tuesday, the 19th of April next, to con- 

 sider and adopt for presentation to the governments 

 so represented for their acceptance a plan and system 

 for the establishment by international convention of 

 the use of gold and silver as bi-metallic money at a 

 fixed relative value between those two metals. 



Messrs. William M. Evarts, Allen G. Thur- 

 man, and Timothy O. Howe were promptly 

 appointed as delegates on behalf of the United 

 States, and Mr. S. Dana Horton was subse- 

 quently added. The French Government ap- 

 pointed M. Magnin, the Minister of Finance ; 

 M. Dumas, Secretary of the Academy of Sci- 

 ences, and President of the Mint Commission ; 



