ON VARIATIONS IN THE VALUE OF THE MONETARY STANDARD. 141 



are brougbt up against the problem which has been proposed to thia 

 Committee. 



This problem, as we have seen, presents a variety of phases. But 

 for the particular purpose in hand it will be sufficient to make two divi- 

 sions. First, we may suppose the variation in the Monetary Standard 

 ascertained by examining a wider sphere of industry tha,n foreign trade, 

 or we may confine ourselves to the statistics of exports and imports. The 

 first alternative has not been entertained by Mr. GifFen in his Reports ;. 

 and it will bo dismissed here as leading back to varieties of our problem 

 which have been already considered. Again, the following distinction 

 may be taken. In combining the comparative prices or ratios between 



11 11 



]0 



■o 



10 11 1-2 1-3 li 



the prices of each article at two compared epochs we may assign a cer- 

 tain weight to each ratio proportioned to the importance of the corre- 

 sponding commodity, or else we may suppose a change in the level of 

 prices propagated over a whole zone of trade in such wise that we may 

 take a simple average of the given ratios without attending to the cor- 

 responding masses of commodity. For a farther enunciation of this 

 hypothesis the reader is referred to the former Memorandum,' and to 

 the sixth section of the present one. Of these alternatives Mr. Giffeu has 

 adopted the former. 



' Brit. Assoc. lirjiort, 1887, p. 280. 



