THE CURRENCY DANGER. T HE interest, the very great interest, of
the debate of Tuesday on Mr. Everett's motion that the Govern- ment should favour another international conference about silver consists mainly in two facts,—one, that the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer, who delivered a most earnest and able speech in favour of the present currency, was afraid to resist the motion ; and the other, that the motion followed the vote of the German Reichstag in the same sense, and the defeat of Mr. Cleveland in his effort to make gold the only legal tender in payment of the national debts. The practical situation therefore stands thus. A party in America, strong enough to veto all legislation contrary to its ideas, is almost fanatically Bimetallist, and is increasing in strength, all accounts reporting that the gold party remains firm in the Eastern States, but the silver party increases in the Western States, where the bulk of the American people live. A party in Germany, strong enough to carry votes against the Government, has adopted not in- deed Bimetallism, but the idea that Bimetallism would cure many of the present evils now summed up in the word "depression," and especially the impend- ing ruin of the great agricultural interest. In the Latin nations, the Government and people have remained in theory entirely, and in practice partly, Bimetallist. The Bimetallist party in South America is stronger than its rivals, South America selling silver; and in Asia Mono- metallists can hardly be said to exist, or exist only because they are silver men exclusively, who would gladly see the whole world use the white metal, and not gold. And now in Great Britain we have a Government with a majority, and Monometallist on conviction, so convinced that the contrary opinion is spreading, that they are afraid to reject what they avowedly consider a useless, or even a senseless, attempt to discuss in another international conference the price of silver. This spreading party, moreover, has convinced Mr. Arthur Balfour, certainly the most popular individual politician in the country, and Mr. Courtney, one of the most authoritative of economists, and has half-convinced men like Mr. Goschen, Mr. Lidderdale, and, it is said, though we do not know for certain, the head of the house of Rothschild, the great gold-dealers of the world. That is to say, the Bimetallist theory has already captured a majority in the world, and is capturing slowly a larger, and more serious, minority even in Great Britain. The character of this general majority and local minority, moreover, increases the impetus, though not the mental authority, of the movement.
All over the world it may be taken as a broad truth that the Bimetallists are the producers, impatient of low prices, and the Monometallists are the consumers who do not produce, and who could endure phlegmatically, or with delight, any degree of cheapness. That means that the agriculturists, who everywhere outside England are a majority, who wield most of the bayonets, and who are specially impatient of low prices because they cannot change their occupations, have caught the Bimetal- list idea or craze, whichever it is, and with charac- teristic stubbornness are forcing action in that sense upon their rulers. In England even they are numerous, though far from a majority, and it is their special representative, Mr. Everett, the mouthpiece of the farmers and yeomen of East Anglia, who has this week extorted from Government an unwilling concession to their opinion. Note carefully, moreover, that the whole party, from Mr. Courtney, who knows what he is saying, to the smallest American freeholder who talks nonsense about " the dollar of our fathers," is gradually formu- lating its faith in a single and intelligible credo. "Legis- lation can fix the relation of silver to gold." They are gradually becoming silent on half their old arguments, re- fusing to discuss the effect of currency on wages, de- clining even to dwell on the injury caused by low prices, and stubbornly reiterating over and over again their dogma that the value of silver was decreased by legislation, and can be raised by it again. That brutal simplicity of argument is, as all experience shows, an immense help towards getting votes, more especially upon a subject which the voters acknowledge on all hands that they do not and cannot completely understand.
We remain Monometallists. Whether it be from stupidity or from insight, we simply cannot believe that if a debt can be paid in two metals of which one is produced faster than the other, legislation can keep them at the same ratio to each other, and if it cannot, Bimetallism is nonsense. The cheaper metal will expel the dearer, and the only result of the experiment, if boldly made for a sufficient time, will be that we shall all be Monometallists and silver will be the world's only currency. Indeed, the American and German Bimetallists begin to recognise that, and curse gold as a poisonous drug with a vehemence of abuse hitherto reserved for popular theologians and lecturers on the evil results of swallowing alcohol or salt. We are unable for several reasons, one of which we give below, to face that contingency, and remain therefore true to the older faith. But we protest strongly against the folly of treating Bimetallism as a mere fad accepted by a few credu- lous dreamers, and sure to pass away without doing much harm. It is shaking politics in America to pieces, and in Europe we have no manner of doubt that a grave currency quarrel in which class will be set against class, is almost immediately at hand. We shall have it even in this country, enormous as is the weight of authority on the Monometallist side, and consistent as our people have been in leaving all such matters to be settled by trained experts. It is linking itself with the Labour question— half Lancashire is furiously Bimetallist—and with the Agricultural question, and will shake Governments and parties before it gets itself settled. We welcome, there- fore, every discussion of it in Parliament, because men are compelled to speak there with some definiteness, because they can be answered on the spot ; and because there is in such controversy among responsible men something of educative effect. The thing to be dreaded is a rush of opinion before the people know clearly what the issues are. We recognise to the full the wearisomeness of the dis- cussion when pursued in the method adopted by Mr. Everett and Mr. Chaplin, the latter of whom really desires to use the Silver question as a, substitute for Protection, while the former descends to nonsense, like his argument that God has made most things dual, and currency ought to be dual too. He might as well argue that we use gold, silver, and copper because of the Trinity. All that is stuff ; but we cannot agree with Sir William Harcourt's idea that if a Monometallist and a Bimetal- list argue for ever, they will never convince each other. They will never, perhaps, remove the secret doubt which lingers in the mind of each of them, but they may solidify opinion sufficiently to be a basis for action. We should say his own speech, if people would read it carefully, skipping the House of Commons stuff about consistency and inconsistency, and Mr. Courtney's speech, would have on average electors a most important effect. They are quite capable of understanding the latter's argument that, as the trouble began with the demonetisation of silver, it would end with its remonetisation ; and they will be really instructed by Sir William Harcourt's picture of the first effects of the proposed international agreement in favour of Bimetallism He took it from Mr.W. H. Smith, but it is none the worse for that ; and it is briefly this. Capitalists believe in gold ; and the moment they feared payment in silver, credit would be extinguished by the sudden "calling in" of all debts. This is what Mr. Smith said, and it cannot be reproduced too often :—" To pass such a resolution would be to inflict one of the greatest disasters upon the mercantile community. It would result in this,—that all those who were entitled to demand money advanced by them would instantly require that it should be paid, and in the coin and currency in which the debt had been con- tracted. Mr. Herries pointed out with overwhelming force that the inevitable result of such a sudden change in our circulation and mercantile transactions would be to produce a panic with absolutely disastrous consequences. I appeal to hon. Members, considering the vast credit transactions which go on in this country and the transactions we have with the whole world, to form some idea of the disaster that would result from the desire on the part of creditors to claim what was due to them before such a change was made." Is any answer to that statement so much as conceivable ? and if there is none, it is surely a heavy' contribution towards the clarification of popular thought. There are many arguments as good in Sir William Har- court's speech and we want more of them to be given— on both sides—and to be suffered to filter down into the general mind before the battle of the currency, which as we fear must come, is actually joined.
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