money, as being a great discovery of Sir Thomas Gresham, the councillor of Queen Elizabeth, although the councillor of the French king had plainly written of it 194 years before, and the French Government had considered and acted upon this very view.1

Henry Dunning Macleod, a most ultra and intolerant gold monometallist, a voluminous writer on political economics, etc., and whose ability is vouched for by many great English law lords, and to whom Mr. Justice Stephen wrote, "I should doubt whether any one living had studied questions of political economy and the branches of law which relate to it

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1 Regarding the effects of debased money, Oresme writes: et encores, qui est pire chose, les changeurs et banquiers qui sçavent où l'or a cours à plus hault pris, chacun en sa figure, ilz, par secrèts cautelles, en diminuent le pays, et l'envoient ou vendent dehors aux marchans, en recevant d'iceulx autres pièces d'or, mixtes et de bas aloy, desquelles ilz emplissent le pays.

Copernicus also stated this law most explicitly as follows: "Cum autem minime conveniat novam ac bonam monetam introducere antiqua viliore remanente, quanto hic magis erratum est vetere meliore remanente viliorem novam introducendoque non solum infecit antiquam, sed, ut ita dicam, expugnavit."

Henry Dunning Macleod.

155

more thoroughly and successfully than you," in a book on Bimetalism,' lately published by Longmans, has helped the discussion of the gold and silver question by clearly and authoritatively stating the case of monometallism against bimetallism, and by a brief analysis of the monetary writings of Oresme2 and Copernicus, and a concise summary of some of the coinage views of Gresham, Petty, Locke, Harris, Bacon, Newton, Adam Smith, Lord Liverpool, Steuart, Pole, Herries, Hankinson, Peel, Mill, and other great authorities.

Macleod says: "All these illustrious writers, except those who declared for a single standard, pointed out that the law must regulate the value of the coins ac

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1 He spells thus " 'Bimetalism," "Monometalism," 'Bimetalist,' Bimetallic," "Monometallic."

2 Roscher, in German, in 1862, and Wolowski, in French, in 1864, had published more important notes on Oresme's noble treatise, and Wolowski had published, in, 1864 very important notes on the great treatise of Copernicus.

That these works of Oresme and Copernicus have not been translated into English is most astonishing when we consider the wonderful originality and genius they display, and which no summary can adequately represent.

cording to the relative market value of the metals in bullion. This was for a long time attempted to be done; but the attempt was finally abandoned as hopeless, and it only led to constant disturbances in the coinage."

Joint-metallism, when established would "regulate the value of the coins according to the market value of the metals" without leading to "disturbances in the coinage."

That my plan of joint-metallism1 was not invented when these great authorities wrote, does not invalidate it; other valuable discoveries have also been made since then.

It is interesting to note how the difficulties which these great political economists find in maintaining a just bimetallism are avoided by joint-metallism, which is a scientific and honest bimetallism. Their writings show how strongly many of

1 See page 121. See also page 5, where the plan was stated in a concrete manner, as was necessary for newspaper publication, but the details as to the gold coin to be selected for the standard weight and the periods to be considered, are of course not essential.

Same Ratio for Coins and Bullion. 157

them felt the importance of the general coinage and circulation of both metals and at their relative market values, but that they failed to hit upon the plan of jointmetallism, which compels the use of both together, with ratios always based on their relative market values, without frequent recoinings, and prevents one precious metal from driving out the other.

Of Oresme and Copernicus Macleod says: Nicholas Oresme, afterwards Bishop of Lisieux, who wrote a Treatise on the Coinage, which may justly be said to stand at the head of modern economic literature. But the doctrines maintained by these two great authorities are absolutely identical. They are 5. That the coins of gold and silver must bear the same ratio to each other as the metals in bullion do in the market: They quite perceived the impossibility of keeping gold and silver coins in circulation together in unlimited quantities, at a legal ratio differing from the market ratio of the metals.

It was left to the genius

of Petty and Locke' to discover that the true remedy for the perpetual confusion. caused by attempting to keep gold and silver coins in unlimited quantities in circulation together at a legal ratio differing from the market ratio, was to adopt one metal only as the standard, and to make coins of any other metal subsidiary to it, that the coins should be altered in their weights from time to time to meet the alterations in the market value of the metals. Such a plan is absolutely impracticable. It would possess no element of stability. Every change in the market value of the metals would require a fresh calling in and recoining of the coinage, at an expense and worry which no country could stand. All other remedies being exhausted, there is no resource but to adopt Petty and Locke's1plan of Monometalism."

To this I answer that the true remedy is to use the two metals on substantially equal terms according to the plan I have called joint-metallism.

My book, Joint-Metallism, appears not

1 See page 129.