signifies trade on better terms with the world, as well as a change in the local value of money.

The question whether the new mines have lowered the value of money in England is one the more difficult to answer with precision, since, in addition to the absence of perfect statistics, causes, such as bad seasons and the Russian and American wars, have temporarily affected the prices of great classes of goods. Setting aside these disturbances, the truth seems to be, that while, on the one hand, such important commodities as corn, sugar, and coal* are cheaper than formerly, and the wholesale prices of textile manufactures, although higher than during the depression of trade, for some years before 1851, remained nearly stationary from that year until the American war, on the other hand, the prices of animal food, of land, and of metal manufactures have considerably risen; and the result would appear to be, that in wholesale trade the general value of money was not sensibly altered in England before the American war. But, speaking of retail prices, into which higher rents, wages, and prices of animal food more or less enter, we should say that the cost of subsistence is decidedly greater to all classes, except agricultural labourers, whose chief expenditure is on bread, sugar, and tea; and that fixed incomes by no means buy as much as they used, especially in remote parts of the country. We believe, too, with an eminent economist, that the real rise of prices to consumers is partially disguised in a deteriorated quality of many things. The disguises which the fact that people are really given less for their money may assume, are numberless. For example, the prices were the same at the bathing establishments of Biarritz last autumn as in former years, but the visitor could often get nothing but a wet and dirty bathing dress for his sous. French gloves, again, are not only dearer than formerly, but seem made in order to tear; and both in England and France, washerwomen are apt to spoil linen now for the prices at which they used formerly to dress it.

But the effects of the new mines upon prices are far less obscurely and far more satisfactorily discernible in countries like India, where they have directly or indirectly furnished the means of raising the remuneration of industry, and circulating produce which had formerly little or no circulation. The result of this influx of money into India is by no means merely the trouble of carrying and counting more coins to do the same business as formerly; and so far as there has been such a result, it might have been in a great measure avoided had the Government allowed gold to pass current as money. By the exclusion of gold, India has been obliged to fetch a much bulkier material for its currency from a far greater distance, and to incur an unnecessary loss, first, on the freight from abroad; next, on the coinage at the mint; thirdly, on the carriage through the country; and fourthly, on the wear and tear of so many more new coins. The great mines of Australia seem to have been specially designed to provide, at a comparatively small cost, the additional money required by the increased trade of India, and its Government to have resolved to defeat the economy of nature. In contending, however, for all possible economy in the monetary system of India and every other country, we cannot adopt the opinion Mr. Patterson appears to entertain, that the economy might be carried so far as to dispense with the cost of metallic currencies altogether. Coin is better fitted for rough work and for the labourer's pocket than bank-notes. It cannot, like paper, be eaten by ants in the East, and is safer from water and fire. Nor can we conceive that a currency would be safe from depreciation by excess, unless based upon things possessing intrinsic value like silver and gold. Mr. Patterson argues that the value of money depends simply on its conventional use and -acceptance. But limitation of supply is in all cases an indispensable condition of value; and the history of assignats in France, and greenbacks in America, shows that negotiability does not constitute the determining element of the value of a currency.* And taking this view of the monetary use and importance of the precious metals, it seems to be a question worth considering, whether the future supplies are likely to be sufficient to supply money enough for the rapid progress of the backward parts of the world, and the immense development their resources seem sure to obtain. Mr. Maine has remarked that investigators of the differences between stationary and progressive societies must, at the outset, realize clearly the fact that the stationary condition of the human race is the rule, the progressive, the exception; and when this reflection was made, the condition of the greater part of Asia and of Northern Africa might even have justified the proposition that a retrograde condition of the human race was the rule. In the wildest regions frequented by the nomad hordes of Central Asia, the traveller discovers the vestiges of former cultivation and wealth. But he can now perceive in such regions that while he stands on the grave of an old civilization he stands also on the borders of a new one. It seems certain, at least as regards Asia, which contains the bulk of the human race, that not only the stationary, but the retrograde communities will become progressive-will be reached by roads, railways, river navigation, and Western commerce, and obtain the aid of Western capital and skill. And it seems equally certain that the pecuniary value of their produce will immensly increase; that they will need vast quantities of coin for its circulation; and that the question is one of importance, whether coin enough for the purpose will be easily obtained. The steady decline of the produce of some of the new gold mines might seem to justify a doubt on the subject. But from Mexico and South America additional supplies may be expected. Of Peru the British Consul says: 'Peru is one vast mine which the hand of man has only hitherto scratched.' To the produce of the mines must be added the vast sums that the progress of commerce will restore to circulation from the hoards of Asia and Europe, which, even in such places as Lapland, are great. Large sums of Norwegian money are said by Mr. Laing, in his Journal of a Residence in Norway, to have disappeared in Lapland; the wealthiest Laplanders having always been accustomed to live, like the poorest, on the produce of the reindeer, and to bury the money coming to them from Norway in places where their heirs often fail to discover it.

The movement we have discussed is one which tends to bring all buried and neglected riches to light; and we anticipate from it both an ample provision of money and an increasing demand for it; although temporary fluctuations in both may cause changes in prices.

XXII.

PRICES IN GERMANY IN 1872.

(Fortnightly Review, November 1, 1872.)

THE theoretical principles involved in what is called the gold question are matters, for the most part, about which little controversy exists, although there may be much respecting their application to facts, from the difficulty of ascertaining the real facts. The effect on prices of a great increase in the quantity of the precious metals in the world, depends on their distribution; on the proportions converted into money on one hand, and articles of use or ornament on the other, the latter constituting, in the hands of dealers, an addition to the demand for money, not to the supply of it; on the activity of the part converted into money, and the degree to which the volume of metallic circulation is swollen by instruments of credit; and, lastly, on the course which the additional expenditure takes in each country, and the conditions affecting the supply of the things on which it is laid out. The mere statement of these conditions shows such a multiplicity of agencies at work that the necessity of proceeding by observation to determine the actual movements of prices is evident; indeed, extensive and careful observation on the part of many inquirers is likely, after all, to leave us in ignorance or doubt on some points, but it cannot fail to afford much information, especially as foreign countries must be the principal field of inquiry. On the distribution of the precious metals, first of all, and the opening up of new channels for the new streams of treasure, hang the gravest issues affecting the classes with stationary incomes in this country. The rise of prices has for some months attracted