'3T4 thj: questions of the day. 



gold would disappear, while yet there was no provision for 

 other currency. Property of all kinds would be in the market 

 at ruinous prices and be bought up by speculators. Granting 

 all that the advocates of free coinage claim as to the injustice 

 which lias been wrought upon the debtor classes by the 

 alleged appreciation of gold, the attempt to remedy it by a 

 sudden inflation of money by free coinage could only result in 

 additional losses tenfold greater, during the interim between 

 deciding to change to a silver basis and the actual accomplish- 

 ment of the act. These losses would not fall wholly upon the 

 rich, wlio in one way or another would know how to protect 

 themselves, nor upon the unindebted, who could doubtless 

 live, but on the debtor classes, who are clamoring for free coin- 

 age. It is true that the actual unincumbered owners of the 

 property of the nation, as they would be when the legislation 

 was completed, and the new silver coinage began to circulate, 

 might look forward to an era of rising prices, as measured in 

 a rapidly depreciating currency; that rising prices excite hope 

 and confidence, and lead to renewed effort, general employ- 

 ment, and increased production ; but prices can not continue 

 to rise indefinitely; sometime they must reach a limit, and if 

 ail former human experience is a guide, must fall from that 

 j)oint. Inspection of the diagrams of prices shows that they are 

 never stal)le, but are always rising and falling, in more or less 

 defined cycles; and so long as they move slowly and regularly 

 along a general level, that is the normal and most pros])orous 

 condition of business; whereas, all nbiionnal increases, whether 

 caused by inflation of currency, or speculative ideas of the 

 value of property, have been invariably followed by corre- 

 sponding abnormal depressions, with all their accompanying 

 distress. We liave lately been nt the bottojn of such an abyss; 

 many inevitable liquidations have taken place; doubtless there 

 may be yet some more to come; but in the main business has 

 adjusted itself to the actual relations of commodities and gold. 

 All loans made or renewed by the great money-lending- 

 agencies are now made payable in gold coin ; no money can 

 now be borrowed in the money market, on long time, except 

 upon such agreements. Almost the only cases in which mort- 



