casionally done this, and it has been done more than once by the United States. These changes have been made under the power given to Congress to regulate the value of coin, and no alteration has been made, or can be made, that does not lessen the legal value of one metal or the other, and so far serve to affect the property of those who hold coins of that metal. Thus, when, by the act of 1837, the gold eagle, which had previously contained 247 grains of fine gold, was required to contain but 2321 grains, the government undertook to give its creditors less gold for ten dollars by fifteen grains than its coins had previously promised. As to the greater part of these fifteen grains the law did no injustice. It merely conformed to the market prices of these metals; but the same thing may be said of the change I propose, and the government has the right, in common with every one else, to make its payments in conformity with that change.

The second objection of "An Observer" is, that the adoption of silver would occasion a great loss to the Treasury. He assumes that the government, having coined eagles and stamped them as being worth ten dollars, could not, without a breach of faith, receive them for less; but that in paying them away they must be passed at what they are fairly worth in the market, and thus the loss by their depreciation would fall on the Treasury. To this objection there are two answers. In the first place, when the government coins gold, and stamps on it its equivalent in silver, it does not guaranty that it shall always be worth the same quantity. It gives no such insurance. It is merely responsible for the weight of the coin, for the degree of purity required by law, and for the value at the time. It undertakes no more. Its functions are analogous to that exercised in its inspec tions for flour; it ascertains and certifies the quantity and quality, and leaves the future price to the uncontrollable arbiter of prices—the market. It must be remembered that the State does not go abroad to purchase the bullion for the mint, but merely coins that which individuals choose to bring to it, to benefit themselves by the manufacture into coin, which, moreover, has hitherto been gratuitous. All the gold which the mint has ever coined has been procured in this way; there is, then, neither reason nor justice in supposing a gratuitous insurance added to a gratuitous coinage.

But, in the second place, if the writer was correct in his premises, they would not warrant his conclusion. It is admitted that, in paying its creditors, the government cannot rate gold beyond its market price, but it is perfectly immaterial whether it receives it at its original or depreciated rate. To make this clear, let us suppose that the annual wants of the government are fifteen millions of dollars, and that the proportion of value of gold to silver is at fifteen to one. In this case, supposing the public revenue equal to the expenditure, the Treasury must receive fifteen millions in silver, or one-fifteenth part of the same quality in gold, its equivalent; and whether the gold coins be received at one rate or another-whether an eagle be called one dollar or one hundred dollars-is as unimportant as the name of a rose is to its sweetness.

Thus, too, in the case put by "An Observer" of an eagle being worth in the market but $9 50, it will be the same thing both to the tax-payers and the government whether the eagle be received at $10 or $9 50. If at the

higher rate, then, as every one will pay in gold, the taxes must be raised 5 per cent (or rather) to make the real equal to the nominal amount of the revenue. The Treasury will then have the same amount as if the revenue were paid in silver, or gold at its market price, and it will be the

same thing to the tax-payers whether they pay in silver or gold. All that they would gain by passing the gold at more than it was worth, they would lose by the additional tax.

The public, therefore, supposing it to have common sense, would not object to the government receiving gold at the same rate at which every one else received it, that is, at its fair market value; and though it did object, and the objection were respected, the State could neither gain nor lose.

I have thought it worth the trouble to take this notice of "An Observer's " objections to silver as the sole standard, because those objections are spacious and well stated; but, judging from one or two passages in his articles, I infer that, whatever may be his other attainments, he is not very conversant in this branch of political economy-certainly not in its history. He supposes that in 1700 the precious metals were worth three or four times as much as at present. Now it is generally admitted that they had attained their utmost limit of depreciation some fifty or sixty years before. Adam Smith, indeed, thinks that from 1700 to the time he wrote, about 1775, silver had slightly risen in value; and supposing him mistaken, there is no reason to suppose it had fallen. After the disturbances in Spanish America, in 1810, by which the mines were for many years less productive, the price of both had unquestionably risen, and some suppose that they have hardly yet fallen to their former level.

For the preceding reasons I feel anxious that Congress should adopt a single standard, and make that standard silver.

Mr. Hunter's bill, which has passed the Senate, will indeed furnish a temporary remedy for the scarcity of silver now felt, but the objection to it is, that it is temporary. By the adoption of a single standard the remedy would be as lasting as efficient.

T.

Art. V. THE LAW OF PROGRESS IN THE RELATIONS OF CAPITAL AND

LABOR, &c.

IT has become apparent that the controversy between Mr. Sulley and myself may as well be brought to a close. It can possess no interest for the public, farther, than we are respectively the representatives of great schools and systems of Political Economy. I understood him in the outset to hold such a position, and to come into the field prepared to defend the views of Malthus, Ricardo, and the modern English Economists. He was indignant that "the great men who have written on Political Economy since Adam Smith, should be set aside to make room for Mr. Carey," and appeared as their champion. I proposed to make good the defense of Mr. Carey out of the mouths of the very persons whose superiority Mr. Sulley sought to vindicate. I cited with this object Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, M-Culloch, and John Stuart Mill. In his reply, Mr. Sulley overruled their testimony. "It matters little," said he, in September, "what Smith, Ricardo, M'Culloch, and Mill conceded-that would not make a proposition true if it were originally false." Doubtless; but it might help to determine whether it was true or false, and whether Mr. Carey or myself were to be impeached in their names, and summarily smote down, for contempt of those whom the

world has agreed to regard as great teachers in this department of inquiry. Inasmuch as Mr. Sulley only indicated his great men in general terms, without naming them, and was at liberty to say, if I should call any new witness, that they were not the persons he had in mind, I distinctly invited him in your November number to specify who he meant, and pledged myself to go to them for my citations. I showed in this the truest respect for the Economists as a body, by announcing my belief that they contained sufficient truth to furnish a corrective for their own errors. I went further, I challenged him to name any single one, and proposed to refute him by that one; and in reference to the general question took upon myself the task of showing that there is not a single one who has not made fatal concessions and been betrayed by the necessities of a false system into flagrant inconsistencies. This was bold enough to be exposed to the imputation of arrogance. It courted chastisement from a man whom I supposed able to inflict it, if I was in error, and very willing to do so if he could. He had shown no mercy to Carey whom he had not read, how should I, whom he had read, escape simple justice? No man would have pitied me in my discomfiture.

Whether because I am right, or because Mr. Sulley cannot show that I am wrong, he declines the issue. He tells us in your April number, that "it would be more to the purpose, if my opponent could show that my facts and theories are inconsistent in themselves, than to trouble himself whether they agree with Smith, Ricardo, &c., or whether they agree with me." But I did not undertake to discuss the correctness of Mr. Sulley's opinions, except in so far as they are those of the Ricardo school, or derived from them. Error in those men is mischievous, because it derives credit from the deference paid to great names-because multitudes rely on their guidance, and because we can never present an argument in behalf of the protection system, without having their authority appealed to, as settling the question against us. There are hosts of practical men who take it for granted, so often and so confidently do they hear the Economists cited as having disposed of the point forever, that they must discredit the science and its teachers as merely visionary. These men suffer their sons to be taught the doctrines of Ricardo and his school in our colleges, with as little apprehension apparently of their exercising a permanent control in their opinions, as they have of their imbibing a belief in the heathen mythology from the classics. In this they err greatly. It is a great object to make them see that the most vital interests hinge upon the point, which they are apt to regard as purely speculative, whether men commence the work of cultivation upon the rich soils and proceed to the poorer, as population and capital increase, or begin upon the inferior soils, and pass to the occupation of the more fertile, as the increased power of associated labor, and the acquisition of capital enable them to do so. It was for this purpose mainly, that I addressed a communication to your Magazine; it was also my object to show, that the question having been solved correctly by Mr. Carey, the science of Political Economy constructed by him upon the basis of fact, instead of the plausible fictions which Malthus and Ricardo assumed, was entirely competent to account for, and explain the history of human progress. "In order "says Mr. Mill, in his Logic, quoting Comte-" to prove that our science and our knowledge of the particular case render us competent to predict the future, we must show that they would have enabled us to predict the present and the past."

I brought the science of Carey on the one hand, and the hypothetical

dogmas of Ricardo and Malthus on the other, to this test. I admit the logical power of the latter to the fullest extent. The fault is in their premises. These granted, their conclusions follow-prove them inevitably. I know no other class of writers who pursue their inferences to their full logical extent, and stand to them so unflinchingly. So much the more are they stumbling blocks in the road to truth. So much the more was it worth while to discuss what is due to their pretensions, especially to one who fancied he could make it evident that he knew and appreciated them. Whenever Mr. Sulley becomes the tenth part as formidable an obstacle to the spread of correct views, as they are, he will find plenty of abler opponents than myself, ready to contest his notions per se, without troubling themselves whether they agree with Smith, Ricardo, &c. Meantime I must decline the effort. What the case of the English Economists is, I thought myself able to understand and to meet, for it is extant in print, and I was willing to argue it with him as counsel in their behalf, but when it comes to his own untold fullness, I leave it to men of more courage and endur

ance.

66

For there is yet another difficulty which I could not overcome, even if his self isolation from the great men, in matters of reasoning, did not remove the inducements for discussion. He holds authority in quite as little esteem in regard to matters of fact. I cited some very interesting tables from Moreau de Jonnes, to establish the facts that the agricultural production of France had, in the last one hundred and fifty years, increased twice as much as the population, the first having quadrupled, while the second has doubled-that the proportion of the entire product going to the laborer, has risen from 35 per cent to 60,-that notwithstanding this increase in the proportion of the laborer, the total product is so much enlarged as to leave a larger amount, though a less proportion, to the capitalists and non-agricultural classes they having increased 100 per cent, while the surplus left, after giving the agricultural laborers their enlarged proportion, has increased 127 per cent. These statistics Mr. Sulley thinks no person who glances over them with the eye of a critic, will consider of the least weight." The fact that Moreau de Jonnes, the highest statistical authority in Europe, has been occupied, with persevering pains, twenty-five years, in collecting the materials for his tables," from historical, economical and administrative documents," shows to Mr. Sulley "at once that no dependence can be placed on them. The official position of De Jonnes in that period, his precise duty, indeed, for he is at the head of the department of statistics, in that nation which more than any other in the world excels in such inquiries -has given him such means of information as no other man ever possessed. A nation which has half a million civil officers to collect statistics for itwhose franked letters to and from the executive departments rose in the year 1843 to the number of 16,363,956, equal, comparing their weight with the mean weight of the letters of individuals to 130,529,450 single letters*– whose system of centralization is such, that the ministry at Paris may be said to have a finger in every business transaction in France-can obtain reliable statistics, if the thing is possible. De Jonnes had no theory to support like that under our consideration, and there is nothing tending in the slightest degree to convict him of prejudice. Moreover, his statement has been be

Report of M. Chegary to the Chamber of Deputies on Postal Reform, 5th July, 1844, quoted in Journal des Economistes, for January, 1852,

fore the Economists of France, some two years, without contradiction. It was read before the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, in January, 1850, as I infer, from a notice of it by the Paris correspondent of the London Times, on the 17th of that month, a memorandum of which I found within a few days, that I had preserved. Now, if I cannot avail myself of the authority of De Jonnes upon a matter not of estimation but of well sifted statistics, for so he puts it forth, then it is vain to expect any authority would establish a fact to the satisfaction of Mr. Sulley, when it runs counter to his preconceived opinion. He having made up his mind that it is impossible the laboring population of France can ever have been worse off, than they are now described by Blanqui in the extract I furnished, of what avail is it to cite the following description, in the quaint words of Fortescue, of their condition in the 15th century:

"Thay drynke water, they eate apples, with bred right brown made of rye. Thay eate no flesche, but if it be selden, a litill larde, or of the entrails, or heds of bests sclayne for the nobles and marchaunts of the lond. Thay weryn no wollyn, but if it be a pore cote under their uttermost garment, made of grete canvas, and cal it a frok. Their hosyn be of like canvas, and passen not their knee; wherefor they be gartrid, and their thyghs bare. Their wyfs and children gone barefote; thay may in non otherwise lyve; for sume of them, that was wonte to pay to his lord for his tenement, which he hirith by the yere, a scute, payyth now to the kyng, over that scute fyve skuts. Wher thrugh they be artyd by necessitie so to watch, labour, and grub in the ground, for their sustenaunce, that their nature is much wastid, and the kynd of them brought to nowght. Thay gone crokyd and ar feble, not able to fyght, nor to defend the realme; nor thay have wepon, nor monye to buy them wepon withal; but verely thay lyvyn in the most extreme povertie and myserye, and yet thay dwellyn in one the most fertile realme of the world.'"

He seeks to prove the facts of De Jonnes, no-facts, by the argument, that "while the crops have increased relatively to population one hundred per cent, the prices of grain have also slightly increased, showing that the demand has fully kept pace with the supply; therefore, this quadruple increase of the crop is a chimera." Well, would not the demand have kept pace with the supply, if each man consumed twice as much as before, as De Jonnes avers they do, having more than three times as much wages to buy with What other testimony can I produce that may not be argued. down in the same fashion?

Mr. Sulley's theory requiring that the laborers of England should be in a worse condition than one hundred years ago, of what avail is the testimony of Mr. M'Culloch in his last book, on the circumstances which determine the rate of wages, published in November, 1851 ?

Their condition, says M'Culloch, is greatly changed since the American war; the people are now better fed, better clothed and better lodged than at any period of the past. We know that Lord John Russell said, in 1844, that the labouring classes had retrograded since the last century. But in spite of the respect due to so high an authority, we remain convinced that his assertion is not justified by the facts. The greater part of the objects of consumption are at as low a price now as in 1740, and many, like the articles of clothing, are obtained cheaper, notwithstanding the well founded complaints which the unhealthy habitations of the working class have excited, they are better lodged than during the past century or at any former period.