Conservative.
' .TOI.IET AGAIN.
PIIKM'S OF . . .
A few weeks ngo , our renders may
possibly remember , Tira CONSERVATIVE
gave n pngo to a consideration of the
mighty crime of 1878 , as understood or
misunderstood , ns judged or misjudged ,
and as harmlessly denounced , by Mr.
A. S. Phelps of Joliefc , Illinois. It maybe
bo recalled that we dealt gently with
Mr. Phelps tempering justice with
mercy , and preferring sweet reasonable
ness to harsh invective so that in set
ting forth , as discreetly as wo could , the
reasons why the perfidious Briton
could hardly have been ennbled to do
the American farmer out of $5,000,000-
000 by any modification of the United
States coinage laws , wo studiously fore-
bore to state in terms our opinion of
that proposition. Nor shall wo swerve
from this method of treatment , however
clearly it may appear that our consider-
ateuess is thrown away upon Mr. Phelps.
"We are plenteously endowed with
patience ; and though a lack of this trait
does not necessarily indicate a weak
cause , the presence of it is a .quite fitting
mark of a strong cause.
In saying that advocates of 16 to 1 , as
exemplified by Mr. Phelps , are not open
to argument , we have no desire to repre
sent them as hostile to truth as such , or
under the dominion of sordid self-
interest , to a degree exceeding human
nature generally. We explain this in
capacity of theirs as an outcome of
mental confusion rather than of moral
obliquity. "When Mr Phelps talks about
"the substitution of the gold standard
for the bimetallic standard in 1873 , " for
example , he simply shows us that his
mind has not yet grasped the idea of a
standard and until that idea has been
fairly grasped , there can be nothing
gained by employing the word. The
standard , in any one kind of measure
ment , must be one thing ; which other
things may exceed , fall short of , or
coincide with , just as a point may be
higher or lower than , or coincident with
a fixed base level.
Laws fixing standards may easily be
ambiguous or indefinite in their terms ,
and often have been. A celebrated old
English statute defined the inch as the
length of three corns of ripe barley , from
the middle of the ear , properly dried
and placed end to end. King Henry I
is said to have decreed that the yard
should be the length of his own arm.
We have not the record of any adjudi
cation of controversies arising out of
these definitions , and cannot therefore
tell whether the foot measure still in use
among the English and among ourselves
is one that resulted from adding the
lengths of 86 barley-grains or from , di
viding the King's arm into thirds , or
whether what is quite as probable as
either we really inherit that measure
from something used by some forgotten
local guild of merchants , as we inherit
the "Troy weight" from the meditoval
jewelers of Troyes. But we can tell one
thing positively , and that is that our
standards of yard , foot and inch mean
one definite thing now , and that they
therefore did not originate in two or
three of these suggested ways , but in
one only. If a merchant at any time
contracted to deliver so many yards of
cloth , even if the law was phrased so as
to admit of his reckoning his yard ac
cording to a certain number of grains of
ripe barley or to King Henry's arm , we
can feel pretty certain that he would
choose the constructions that would let
him off with the shorter measure. That
would bo for his purpose the sole stand
ard , exactly as though the other had
never been mentioned. If men were
differently constituted , and some of them
deliberately preferred to give the longer
measure , there might be some reason
for speaking of an ambiguous law as
furnishing a double standard. But even
then there would be no need or even
possibility of defining the greatest meas
ure that a merchant could give in dis
charging a contract. The minimum is
the only limit that can be distinctly set.
We may therefore say , freely and fear
lessly , that the law however ambiguous
or indefinite its terms fixes but one
standard of length.
The case is not different with stand
ards of value. If the law allows an
option between two things , or two
hundred things , in discharging a con
tract , it fixes , not two or two hundred
standards , but one standard. The
standard is the lowest value admitted ,
when the law is ambiguous , and that
value only ; the scale of higher or lower
being fixed , not by legislation , but by
demand and supply in the open market.
In this country the standard dollar , until
June , 1884 , was 871 grains of fine sil
ver ; after January , 1837 that standard
was 23.22 grains of fine gold ; that alone ,
whether other coinage was called legal
tender or not. From 1862 to December ,
1878 , the legal standard was a chance of
gold that is to say , something that
varied according to the probability that
a certain paper promise to pay a dollar
would at some time actually command
28.22 gold grains ; falling as that prob
ability diminished , rising with its in
crease , and becoming equal to gold when
it became certainty. The law per
mitted payments in gold and payments
in silver , at face value , during those
seventeen years , just as it permitted
debts of a dollar to bo paid by $1.10 or
$1.20 or $2.00 or $20.00 in currency , any
one of these permissions affecting the
standard just as much as any other. The
only real standard in those years was
the promissory dollar , the dollar of
least worth at the time , and it is just seat
at all times when the law allows an al
ternative. There is never more than one
real standard of values , as there is never
more than one real standard of lengths.
Why is there so much confusion of
mind on so simple a point ? Macaulay
has somewhere expressed the conviction
that the reason why the doctrine of
gravitation is so universally accepted is
that no one is pecuniarily interested in
having it denied ; and that if money
were to be made in any such way , even
that obvious truth would bo stoutly
contradicted from every quarter. Wo
can imagine such an explanation ap
plied to the cases , say , of Jones and
Stewart of Nevada ; but we would not
think of applying it to Phelps of Joliet.
The source of confusion with him , and
with thousands of good people just like
him , is less self-intorest than a real mix
ing up of ideas. Silver advocates uni
versally confuse legal tender of metals
with monetary use of metals , assuming
that an admission of gold and silver on
equal terms at a declared ratio in pay
ment of debts will necessarily put more
gold and silver in currency circulation :
something which by no means follows.
They also confuse easier payment of
debts with greater ability to make a liv
ing. They confuse the debtor class with
the working class. Like many who are
not silver advocates , they are apt to con
fuse speculative fever with prosperity.
Their favorite field of confusion , per
haps , is the "quantity theory" of money ,
which is made to mean , under their
treatment , anything from "the value of
money , like other goods , is affected by
the supply , " in which shape it is a
truism , to "the total value of the money
of a country is the same , whatever its
volume , " in which shape it is absurd.
But the most fatal of all these con
fusions , one that is answerable for more
silverite blundering than anything else ,
is the mixing up of two distinct functions
of money , that of paying debts and that
of measuring values in free exchange.
Government has unlimited power over
the first function , but very little indeed
over the second. When Mr. Phelps
says , for sample , "that dollars are the
creation of law instead of the creation
of labor , arid that their purchasing
power is regulated by the application of
human laws , " the reason why he is
right in his first clause and wrong in his
second is that he begins by calling atten
tion to the power of the law over the
satisfaction of debts , where it is abso
lute , and ends by assuming that it has a
power over measurement of values ,
where it is almost impotent. The law
can say without appeal what shall be
a dollar , but it is dumb as to what its
dollar shall buy. It can make silver
worth $1.29 an ounce any day it chooses ,
but it cannot give such a dollar and
twenty-nine cents the same power to
supply the wants of the holder that
those denominations of money possess
today.
It is hardly worth while to say more
about mental confusions , as illustrated
by Mr. Phelps , though his remarks
about what happens "when a dollar
will buy more labor or more commodities
which are the products of labor , " and