Future Paper Money of This Country [pp. 1-25]

FUTURE PAPER MONEY OF THIS COUNTTRY.
were about, and the chance of the payer, and the risk of the
payee, that if either metal should depreciate, the cheaper would
be used to discharge the debt. It would be the only fair bi metallism It is not in the nature of things, or according to
experience, that the relative values of gold and silver should
remain unchanged, whether as affected by the cost of producing
them, or the alternations in demand and supply for useful and
ornamental purposes other than money.
But as it is impossible permanently to legislate value into
any human product beyond the cost of its reproduction, so no
such factitious value can be long injected into silver by any
government or syndicate of governments. The recent confer ence of diplomatic representatives of the great powers to fix
the relative values of gold and silver, broke up without seriously
making the attempt; and well they might, for all such attempts
are vain unless they can prevent all discoveries of Bonanza
mines of either metal to lessen the cost of its production, or
can increase the demand for it by arbitrary annulment of the
laws of human nature which determine its wants and their in tensity. The apparent exception in the case of the present concurrent circulation of gold and silver dollars, the latter worth
in the markets of the world less than seven eighths of the other,
is no real exception. It is due wholly to government monopoly
of the coinage of silver dollars. If free coinage of silver, or
coinage at a seignorage barely sufficient to pay its cost, were
allowed, as in the case of gold, the process would be a very
short one to the virtual demonetization of gold. ( All who had
debts of any magnitude to pay would buy silver bullion at present prices and demand its coinag'e at the national mints, thus
saving one eighth of the amount of the debt.) The principal
accumulations of gold coin, whether in Treasury or bank
vaults, or private hoards, would with great rapidity find their
way to the melting-pot, or to the steamship for transportation
to pay for foreign imports, when $87I gold would pay as much
as $IOOO silver: just as, during the era of irredeemable legaltender paper, gold, being at a premium, was used to discharge
foreign debts, and the greenbacks or their representatives for
all domestic money.
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