property and labor, and the whole tendency of the system is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. The system, however, is in accord with the views held by the aristocratic or governing class of Great Britain, and finds its champions in a school of political economists, who profess to believe, and strive to inculcate, the doctrine that it is natural and proper that poverty and want and disease and misery should be next door neighbors of wealth and unbounded prosperity. It is due chiefly to this system of money that such great extremes of wealth and poverty are to be found in Great Britain.

France, like Great Britain, uses both coin and paper money, but money in France is instituted upon entirely different principles. The policy of the French Government is to render money abundant and cheap, in order that the exchanges of the nation may be effected with the least cost possible, and that. the productive ability of the people may be developed to the utmost extent. The men who moulded the French system were wise enough to know that labor is the true source of wealth, and that the surest way to render the government powerful was to enable the masses to become prosperous. This was not accomplished without a great struggle. Colwell, in his work on The Ways and Means of Payment, says: "The system of public finance in France, once so cumbrous and awkward, so expensive and otherwise disadvantageous to the nation, has, during the past half century,* under the able direction of Count Mollien, the Marquis D'Audriffet and other eminent men, undergone such radical changes as have completely modified both its principles and its mode of operation. These reforms were resisted, in every stage and with every weapon, by the parties (the money power) interested in maintaining old

*This was written prior to 1860.

abuses. The persevering efforts of honest and intelligent men for thirty or forty years overcame all opposition, and France now enjoys a financial system, in not a few respects, superior to any other nation." The people of France have the cash system and pay as they go. The circulation of the country consists of about $1,200,000,000 in specie and about $500,000,000 of irredeemable legal tender paper money, issued by the Bank of France. The London Standard of April 14, 1876, in commenting on the remarkable condition of the French finances, says:

"The Bank of France at the present time occupies in the financial world a position more remarkable than has ever been held by such an establishment. Its notes enjoy a forced currency and are a legal tender in all business transactions, yet those notes suffer no depreciation. They pass from hand to hand for precisely the same value as gold. A sufficient explanation of this fact may, perhaps, be found by some persons in the circumstance that the bank has accumulated in its coffers at this moment the greatest quantity of the precious metals that has ever yet been possessed by a single establishment. That, however, does not really account for the undiminished credit of the bank. For even in the agony of the last war, when the veteran armies of the empire were prisoners in Germany, when Paris was closely invested, and one-third of the departments were occupied by the invader, the bank's notes were at no greater discount than two or three per cent., and almost immediately rose to par. It is, then, the admirable management of the bank, not the satisfactory nature of its reserve, which gives to it the confidence it commands. It adds to the peculiarity of the posi tion that, although the bank possesses a stock of gold and silver out of all proportion greater than is held by any other bank in the world, it does not propose immediately to

resume specie payments. And what is more remarkable still, nobody demands that it shall do so."

A further examination of the monetary systems of other nations would disclose similar peculiarities and differences; in some gold is the only tender, in others silver, and in others gold, silver and paper. In Austria, for example, silver pieces of the denomination of one and one and a half florins are a legal tender to any amount. Gold is also coined into pieces of the denomination of four and eight florins (about $2 and $4), but as gold is not a tender, it is regarded as merchandise and fluctuates in value like other merchandise. The Austrian system is modeled after the British system, silver forming the basis instead of gold, and it has proved there as elsewhere a perpetual source of disaster.

From these facts it is manifest that a people should be far more concerned about the manner in which their monetary system is instituted than about the material of which their money is made. The chief function of money is to exchange property and commodities, and it should be instituted in such a manner as to enable this to be done economically and equitably, so that all classes may be duly rewarded in the distribution of the products of labor, according to their deserts.

People strive to accumulate wealth, and wealth, in its ordinary signification, consists of property and money. As money, by virtue of its legal properties, is an equivalent for all kinds of property, its possession is eagerly sought, and hence it seems that people are seeking solely for money, which is not the fact. Money is simply the means to attain the end, which is dominion over property. Real value belongs only to property or products, and money is the legal medium by which it is represented, measured and exchanged,

and hence money, properly considered, is simply a tool of exchange.

As has already been explained, the population, commerce and trade of the world has long since outgrown the supply of the precious metals available for the purposes of a medium of exchange. Other forms of money are in use in all civilized nations. The larger operations of trade, both foreign and domestic, are carried on almost wholly by means of paper devices or substitutes for money, which represent and are based on the value of the commodities exchanged. Bills of exchange constitute the real "money of the world." The trade between different sections of the country, like the foreign trade, is carried on almost entirely by means of bills of exchange, checks, drafts, etc., and no one will say that it is not more economically and safely done than if it was carried on by means of gold and silver. The volume and amount of the bills of exchange, etc., used are limited only by the exchanges to be made. If any one were to suggest that bills of exchange, drafts, etc., whether foreign or domestic, should be limited in volume and amount by law, he would probably be denounced as a fool, and yet it is just as absurd and far more unjust to limit the volume and amount of the legal tender money to an amount manifestly inadequate to effect the exchanges of the nation.

Money, by reason of its legal properties, under any cir cumstances, has sufficient power over property, to enable it to perform all the essential functions of money, namely, to exchange and accumulate value; but to limit it in amount, as by selecting a rare and expensive material like gold, or by arbitrarily declaring by law, as in the case of legal tender Treasury notes, that it shall not exceed a certain sum, without regard to population, extent of country, or exchanges to be effected, is to invest money with an extraordinary

power over property, labor and trade, as unsound in principle as it has proved ruinous in practice.

THE REAL ISSUE.

The issue presented to the American people, then, in the present crisis, is not between specie and paper money, but between two systems of money, both involving the use of paper currency. No more important question could possibly arise, for upon its proper solution depends not only the present prosperity of the nation, but the welfare of the people for generations to come. "Monetary laws," says Kellogg, "are the most important that are enacted, for by these laws money is made the tender for debts and the medium of exchange for products. All individuals are compelled to found their contracts for the necessaries of life upon the standard fixed by law. However good the intention of the parties, their contracts will partake of the evil of the monetary laws upon which they are founded, and every law that goes to support the fulfillment of the contracts will partake of the same evil. * * The laws make money the foundation for all business contracts. The value of this foundation is unjust and continually varying, so that parties in fulfilling their contracts are compelled to give either more or less than a just equivalent for their purchases. The results of all contracts are as varying and unjust as their foundation. The continual fluctuations in the value of money makes a sort of gambling system of all trade."

The distinguishing features of the two systems of money, The Specie Basis or Bank Currency System and The Legal Tender Paper Money System, which are now presented to the American people for their adoption or rejection, have been duly explained in the foregoing pages. It only remains now to bring them together, in order that the