that perhaps there may be a very large development in the production of one of the metals, and not of the other. It matters not Our answer is-the more the better for the world. whether the colour be white or yellow. Both are money," and the world has ample room for the employment of much more money than it yet possesses. Sixth. It is sometimes urged as an objection to our views, that as this is a question of "supply and demand," we somehow contravene the principles of Free Trade in our contention. To this objection we reply, that it is entirely a question of law, and not of demand and supply. Where law prevents the use of a metal in the monetary system of any country, there can be no demand for it, except for manufacturing purposes. The principles of Free Trade were rather contravened by the innovators who fostered the propaganda for a universal gold currency in Europe, the injury caused by whose teachings we are now seeking to counteract by this plea for a return to the world's old conservative method of basing its currencies on both the precious metals-gold and silver. I understand that at the Paris Conference Mr. Goschen rightly admitted that the "cost of production" theory has no place in this question. It would be a waste of time and space to deal with this or any of the other inappropriate objections which, on reflection, will be seen to be without force or application. My hope is now strong that some of our leading statemen will discover, and go along with the current of public opinion, which in many quarters is now running very markedly in the direction of the views I have thus inadequately advocated. That England is determined to adhere to gold only as "money," to her own enormous loss and prejudice, will, I believe, be found to be a popular delusion. Englishmen in the past, though slow to move, have, in the end, been ready to adopt any wise measures likely to promote their material prosperity. The time has fully come when the serious consideration of our wisest men must be turned to our monetary legislation; and I am not without hope that these few pages may be at least useful in turning the attention of some earnest men to what I conceive to be the best method of solving the most vital economic question of our time. LIVERPOOL, March 22nd, 1879. STEPHEN WILLIAMSON, (Messrs. BALFOUR, WILLIAMSON & Co.) II. THE EASTERN TRADE AND THE PRECIOUS METALS. 1. History of the European Commerce into India. By DAVID MACPHERSON. London: 1812. 2. An Historical Inquiry into the Production and Con- JACOB, F.R.S. Two vols. London: 1831. F the many fascinations which the East has held over the thoughts OF and imagination of mankind, the chief and underlying element has been its reputation for vast wealth in gold and silver. The fanciful "Tales of the Genii" have been almost rivalled by the legends and "travellers' tales" of Oriental magnificence of the wealth and pageantries of the Courts of the East, from the "Persic pomp" of Horace to the glories of the Great Mogul and the medieval fables of the Court of Prester John. In authentic history some of the most exciting and romantic chapters are those which narrate the daring enterprises by land and sea by which the young world of Europe strove to reopen communication with the grand old kingdoms of Asia after the earliest and direct routes through Syria and Egypt had become closed and barred by the races which overthrew and established themselves upon the ruins of the Eastern empire of Rome and Byzantium. It was the fame of the Great Khan and the Golden Horde in the depths of Upper Asia and of the Mogul Emperors in India which led Marco Polo, Mandeville, and other bold adventurers to undertake their marvellous expeditions into the unknown solitudes of the Old World,-into the realms of heathendom, of paganism, and Mahound, and which first brought back tidings of Cathay, a new world of civilization lying at the extremity of Asia. It was to reach the Indies and Cathay and the fabled Court of Prester John that the Portuguese mariners toiled and Vasco da Gama succeeded in circumnavigating Africa, unknowing at the outset whether that Continent did not extend to the Southern Pole, for the classic records of its circumnavigation by the navies of the Pharaohs and Carthage were still unknown to reviving Europe. It was with the same object that Columbus, forced to adopt another route than that just discovered, and conceded in monopoly by the Pope to Portugal, faced the wild Atlantic, steering his little squadron through the region of the great calm and of the grassy sea, and stumbled upon a New World. And, well-nigh forgotten though it now be, it was the same object-viz., to reach the Indies, and by a route unmonopolized by Spaniard or Portuguese, that the ever-memorable search for the Northwest passage was begun by the mariners of England and the North, who hoped to reach the golden Indies by rounding the American Continent on the north as Magellan and the Spaniards had done by the south. Even the North Cape was turned and Spitzbergen discovered in a similar search eastward along the ice-bound coast of northern Asia. The Indies, in short, were the golden goal of daring discoverers for several centuries both by land and sea. At the present day, although fable has died out, and India is no longer a land of gold, the importance of communication with the East is recognized as fully as ever; and the Eastern trade, as we shall see, has played the grandest rôle both in commercial and monetary affairs throughout the remarkable epoch of prosperity which the world has witnessed since the birth of the present generation. One of the greatest mechanical triumphs of the age has been the construction of the Suez Canal-reopening a water-way between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean in better fashion than had been done in ancient times by the Pharaohs. And still the work of opening communication with eastern Asia goes on. The Egyptian Canal is a vast improvement upon the route by the Cape of Good Hope, round which the navies of medieval Europe, and more recently our fleets of Indiamen, used to toil by a six months' voyage. But even the new Canal is not enough for the commercial wants of Europe and the imperial interests of England. The Syrian route and the Euphrates Valley railway will ere long carry the steam-car on the track of the camel and the caravan, along the earliest routes of commerce,-awakening the echoes of the long-silent solitudes where once stood mighty Nineveh and Babylon, and their evanescent successors Seleucia and Ctesiphon, and restoring Bagdad and Bussorah to some of their old grandeur and more than their old prosperity. Moreover, this trade with the East has played, and still plays, an important part in connection with the flood of the precious metals which has poured into the world since the discovery of the gold-mines of California and Australia, and the equally rich, though less extensive silver-mines of Nevada-an influx of metallic wealth which has been by far the most striking feature in recent history, and which has given to Europe a Golden Age even more remarkable than the Silver Age, produced by the discovery of America, three centuries ago. It is impossible to understand the monetary events and history of the last thirty years, the most memorable period in modern Europe, and probably the most prosperous which the world ever experienced, without possessing a knowledge of the contemporaneous trade with the East and of its influence upon this tide of the precious metals. This trade itself has undergone a remarkable expansion during the present generation, constituting one of the most striking effects of the gold discoveries; and this expansion of commercial intercourse with the countries of Asia has proved the monetary salvation of the Western world, while improving the material condition of East and West alike. Also, within the last half-dozen years that trade has become seriously complicated-subjected to new conditions, which have chiefly produced the fall in the value of silver which now troubles both Europe and America, and which most injuriously affects the fortunes of India, together with the interests of many thousands of our fellow-countrymen resident in that country. For three centuries or more-ever since civilization began to revive in Europe there has been a steady flow of the precious metals to the East. About the beginning of the last century the fact became observed and commented upon by historical and other writers of a reflective cast of mind. But at first, indeed for a considerable time, it was a mystery. The current was manifest: there it flowed, a flood of gold and silver ever running Eastwards, breaking and disappearing upon the shores of the Levant and the Indies. And as the fact became investigated, it clearly appeared that this Eastward current of the precious metals had been long in existence, and was a permanent phenomenon. But how was it to be accounted for? Easy as the explanation may be nowadays, the fact at first was simply recognized without being explained. It was a mystery. Gold and silver seemed to be attracted to the East in somewhat the same inscrutable manner as the baser metal iron is attracted to the Poles. What added to the mystery was, that this drain of the precious metals to the East was a great change from what had been the course of things in the ancient world. Europe had obtained almost its entire stock of gold and silver-which was so large under the first Roman Emperors-from the countries of the East. The East was proverbially the prolific mother both of gems and of the precious metals. Classic poets had long preceded Milton in singing "the wealth of Ormuzd and of Ind." Babylon and Egypt had amassed vast stores of gold and silver, while Europe was still "the Dark Continent," a waste and howling wilderness. In the royal palace which Diodorus saw at Thebesdoubtless the Ramessium-the King, the great Ramses, was depicted "in glorious colours," offering to the gods the produce of his mines of gold and silver, the quantity there recorded amounting to no less than six millions sterling. And did not the famous Semiramis erect a temple at Babylon to the supreme god, Bel, whereon stood three statues of the chief deities forty feet in height, all of beaten gold, with an altar before them, forty feet long by fifteen in breadth, likewise of gold, and plenished by large golden censers and drinking-vases: the quantity of gold employed in this single work being equivalent, according to the Abbé Barthélemy, to no less than eleven millions sterling! Was not the great Median capital and fortress of Ecbatana a glittering mass of plated gold and silver, the very tiles being of silver, the capture of which place yielded Alexander the Great forty millions sterling in the precious metals; and, after being three times plundered, did not its mere débris yield to Antiochus gold and silver which, when coined, amounted to upwards of a million pounds of our money? Likewise Persepolis yielded to Alexander twenty-seven millions sterling of treasure, nearly all of it doubtless derived from its palaces. Of the gold and silver in their greatest seat of all-viz., Babylon-there is no record among the spoils won by Alexander; the great Macedonian doubtless preferring to maintain intact the golden glories of his capital instead of adding them, like the spoil of other cities, to his treasure-chest. Even the little kingdom of Judea, during its brief heyday, under Solomon, shared in this abundance of the precious metals. The Temple and the House of the Forest of Lebanon blazed with gold; the throne was of ivory covered with the best gold, all the vessels of every kind were of pure gold none were of silver, for that metal was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon-the king made silver to be as the stones in Jerusalem.” Next to Egypt, under its kings of the ancient race, India and Bactria, or Upper Asia, appear to have been the chief gold and silver producing countries. "In the north," says the Father of History, "there is a prodigious quantity of gold, but. how it is produced I am not able to tell with certainty." The old peoples, whoever they were, who occupied Northern Asia prior to the desolating conquest of that region by the Tartars (about 150 B.C.), although ignorant of the use of iron, had long ago worked the gold-beds in the Ural mountains and Siberia, only re-discovered during the present century. Recent travellers have come upon those old workings; and Gmelin, speaking of the remains of the works which had belonged to old silver-mines in Eastern Siberia, remarked that the lead with which the silver had coexisted in the ore was all left, while the silver had been extracted, and only small particles of it had been suffered to remain mingled with the scoriæ. As regards India, Herodotus mentions a gold-working people who lived near the sources of the Indus,-probably in the region now known as Chinese Thibet, from which all strangers are rigidly excluded by the Chinese Government, but which Andrew Wilson and other recent travellers strongly suspect to be rich in veins of the precious metals; and they mention this suspected fact as probably explaining the determined jealousy of the Chinese authorities, who dread that a discovery of this mineral wealth would occasion a large influx of unruly foreigners into this remote part of the Celestial Empire. Speaking apparently of India Proper, but using names unknown to us of the present day, Pliny says, "the Dardaneans inhabit a country the richest of all India in gold-mines, and the Selians have the most abundant mines of silver." "In the country of the Naræans, on the other side of the mountain Capitalia (the Vindhya Mountains ?), there are a very great number of mines, both of gold and silver, in which the Indians work very extensively." The abundance of the precious metals in India in those days is evidenced by the fact that small, and comparatively poor, as was the part of it subject to the Persian monarchy (not exceeding the Punjab and Scinde), the annual tribute of treasures sent to Darius from the Indian satrapy, after defraying the expenses of the local administration, was £600,000, the largest tribute of any of the provinces of the empire, the metropolitan district of Babylon excepted. Moreover, as Herodotus records, there was always trade carried on overland by |