PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 141 



say from one to ten, as involved in fog-signaling, — it may be said 

 that such conditions of aerial uniformity are never present; or in 

 other words that sound beams are never transmitted for any great 

 distance in sensibly straight lines. And hence it is, that after every 

 allowance for lateral deflection, there frequently remain under pecu- 

 liar circumstances, intermediate points of acoustic darkness, or belts 

 and regions of insulated silence. 



The next communication was by Mr. E. B. Elliott, who read 

 from a cablegram from Berlin relative to the Monetary Conference 

 about to meet at Paris, that a fixed legal ratio of value of gold to 

 silver of 15i to 1, and the unrestricted coinage of both metals at 

 this fixed ratio of value, were to be presented to the Convention as 

 the leading subjects for discussion, and prospective adoption. 



The present market ratio is about 18 to 1, the proposed ratio 15£ 

 to 1. Now one ounce of gold and eighteen ounces of silver are 

 equivalents for debt-contracting and debt-paying purposes, but the 

 proposition is that the nations enact that one ounce of gold and 

 15J ounces of silver shall be legal equivalents for debt-paying 

 purposes, the option of deciding in which of the two metals the 

 payment shall be reckoned and paid, to be with the person making 

 the payment, or debtor. It is a proposition then to allow the 

 debtor to scale down his debt from 18 to 15i, to scale down his pay- 

 ments 14 per cent, from the existing standard ; — a proposition that 

 the nations in the payment of their public debts may diminish their 

 payments 14 per cent, and also, that the people in their several 

 countries may liquidate their debts, public and private at the same 

 reduced rate, 14 per cent. 



The adoption of this scheme of partial repudiation by our 

 own or any other nation would of necessity prove disastrous to its 

 credit. 



The ability of our own country to pay its indebtedness is believed 

 to be unsurpassed by any on the face of the globe, but its willing- 

 ness is questioned, and the sending of a Commission to Europe, and 

 inviting a conference of nations to favorably consider the subject 

 of scaling down the value of the monetary unit of account, must 

 tend to the depression of that credit. 



If, with that doubt impending as to our willingness to make 

 full payment of our indebtedness, our nation can borrow at the low 

 rate of o\ or o\ per cent, per annum, there is reason to believe that, 



