They are clever men, the French economists. Eight of them
were recently appointed a Monetary Commission, and one of the first questions pressed to a vote was the propriety of adopting either gold or silver as the standard. The Commission thereupon voted by five to three that gold and silver should both be standards, and both unchangeable. This is precisely equivalent to saying that you may contract debts in one currency and pay them in another, and has stung M. Michel Chevalier into resignation. "In presence of this vote," he writes, "I beg of you, Monsieur le Ministre, to accept my resignation. It would be, it seems to me, a loss of time to attend long sittings in a Commission of which- the majority votes with enthusiasm what all men in Europe, acquainted with the subject, consider as asinine [use cinerie]." M. Chevalier is too intolerant of human stupidity. It takes time to teach men that when you borrow butter, you ought not to pay in milk ; but they will learn it one day,—they will learn it.
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