that man should strive with the elements for food and shelter, but also with his fellow for possession and power. He crowned him monarch over the beasts, the fowls and the fishes, the forces of fire and water, simply by filling him with imperative physical wants whose satisfaction could be secured only by such mastery, firing him with restless curiosity to search out secrets, with love of adventure that turns perils to pleasures, and lastly with this intense passion for power. He has made us monarchs of men in the same way by sending us forth weak and ignorant, yet aflame with desires to know and rule, thus bidding us search before we know, conquer before we rule. Those sitting crowned on thrones once cried in cradles, and those that now cry in cradles God invites to sit crowned on thrones. His invitation is found in this inborn passion for power. There are other than political empires. Humboldt held a sceptre; Hugh Miller swayed a wider province than Alexander's. John Howard was not without dominion, and the sick one that patiently waits the coming of the death-angel is wrapped about in the ermine of royalty. The desire to rule does not necessitate a clashing of rights or true interests. The consciousness of sovereignty may be gratified by all, but only through that agency employed to develop our virtues, the agency of struggle.

This principle again appears in our love of the perfect. Plants will fight persistently against opposing gravitation, send out rootlets to forage for food, let no leaf fall without supplying its place with a bud, will endure every manner of harsh treatment, if they can but perfect the implanted ideal. They are never tempted to relinquish their purpose, never feel disheartened nor tremble with fear, and so there never comes a single joy to gladden them in the battle or after the battle is ended. Inexorable fate drives them to completion. To each one of us have been entrusted germinal ideals, instinct with growing life. We are all created imperfect designedly. Only by surmounting difficulties are we enabled to advance toward perfection. Unlike plants, we may become disheartened, and so God has given us alike for incentive and reward the love of the perfect. Instances might be cited to an indefinite extent, illustrating the intensity of this desire of the mind to realize its implanted ideals, and the compensating joys that accompany and crown a work's completion.

Memory in one characteristic of its power furnishes a further and

most apt illustration. It is a marked fact that there never was a struggle, however painful in the present, though it wring out blood and tears, even though it end in bitter failure, but that if stamped with manly purpose, it served in retrospect greatly to enhance and multiply men's nobler joys. The world's sweetest memories are memories of its sorest griefs. Now after the pain and passion are gone, after the fire that flamed to purify has expired in the ashes, we experience at the recall of the nations' colossal battlings for freedom that brighten the centuries, the most exalted joy at wit nessing the development of the sublime in man.

Pleasure comes, too, from tears shed at the graves of genius, of friendship and of the heart's dead hopes. The darkest passages of our own former lives, if filled with noble endeavor, are counted by us, when freed from the stinging of the sorrow, among the brightest, gathering about them far pleasanter associations than characterize the remembrance of those scenes which while passing seemed so prodigal of joy. If we watch our musings we will find ourselves loving to linger at the graves of our once fond hopes, at the places where we struggled and suffered most, if for worthy ends, where our hot tears fell and our sad hearts sighed for rest. Often we pleasantly recall the trials of other days filling our talk with histories of our sorrows. Strong upon us is the power of their fascination. Intense and subtile is the pleasure that thrills us looking upon the scenes where the light of memory rests upon the moss-grown ruins of what we once held dear. The sadness we feel at such times is a tender sadness, hushing into holy quiet the boisterousness of mirth. Gone, that is the Mountain of Grief's Transfiguration. WM. W. KINSLEY.

KNIES' REFUTATION OF WOLOWSKI'S BI-METALLIC

THEORY.

Translated from the German,

BY F. M. COPPOCK, PH. D., (HEIDELBERG.)

[NOTE OF THE TRANSLATOR.-The following article is from Prof. Knies' book on "Money," published in 1873. (Das Geld, von Karl Kneis, Berlin. 1873). Prof. Knies' standing as one of the

greatest living political economists of Germany, makes any word he may utter in regard to the question which is now perplexing our legislators, worthy of attention. It will be remembered that he belongs to the "professorial-socialistic" school of German political economists, or "Socialists of the Chair," (Kathedersocialisten). His book, "Die Nationaloekonomie vom geschichtlichen Standpunkte," is the standard work upon the ideas of this school. His book on "Geld," which is the first part of a large work which he is publishing on “Money and Credit," is very exhaustive, and shows his great learning, breadth of reading, and ability in logical argument, in every particular, in an equal degree with his former works, which established his reputation. He continued his book on "Money" in a brochure, in which he handles the question of a "World's Money," (Weltgelt und Weltmuenze). Most of the arguments of the advocates for a double standard are based upon the compensation-theory of Wolowski; this the Heidelberg Professor has refuted in such a clear and compressed form, that I have thought it not unworthy the task to put it in an English dress.]

N 1867, L. WOLOWSKI came forward with a new argumentation in favor of the double standard; and his defense of it, as ingenious as it was interesting, won in its way a singular success, (see. La question monétaire, par L. Wolowski, deux. édit. Paris, 1869) and whoever cannot agree with him must, nevertheless, acknowledge that the controversy has, through his instrumentality, been enriched in thought and intensified in interest.

Wolowski explained to his countrymen-without, however, keeping in view at all times the difference between measure of value and standard for prices-that one cannot speak of a standard of value in the same sense that one speaks of a standard for the determination of length, weight, etc., with its unchangeable quality. Neither was he for a double standard in the place of a single. The question was in regard to the measurement of the value of commodities by means of an equivalent in a third ware, which has also a changeable value; and, for this, gold as well as silver have always and everywhere shown themselves especially suitable. The question in regard to a standard was not as to a double standard, but as to a "double legal money," a "double legal mode of payment." The understanding and intention of the law of the 7th of Germinal of the year XI. (28th of March, 1803), was by no means to fix the

relation of value between gold and silver at 1:15%; it was well known that no law could fix this. For the unavoidable changes which occur in trade would have brought about the alternative use for payments, at one time, of the gold which had become cheaper; at another time, of the silver which had become cheaper. This would without doubt involve a certain favor to the debtor, but that would correspond to the spirit of the French laws generally. For "our code, by a provision both wise and humane, has always had care to spare the position of the debtor; in doubt, it always desires that the legal interpretation should be in his favor." From the validity of this double medium of payment, there would result the greatest possible constancy in the value of the legal measure of value, and a much greater constancy than with either a silver or gold standard. For, as soon as one metal would sink in price, all debtors would make their payments in this cheaper metal. The increasing demand for the cheaper metal and the decreasing one for the other, would stop the depreciation of the first, and would confine the oscillations of the relative value around the point named in the law. On the other hand, with a single standard, the depreciation or appreciation of one of the standard metals would be able to go on unrestrained. By this fact it is explained why, on the whole, such moderate fluctuations from the relation of 1:151⁄2 have been experienced. The development of this glorious result of the alternating standard, legal in France since 1803, has been aided by the fact, that, within the boundaries of the English empire, there has in reality existed at the same time a gold and a silver standard (by reason of the silver standard in East India); farther, by the fact that the different states of the earth, taken as a whole, represent one great country with the double standard, because some use the simple silver, others the simple gold standard. As soon as the pressure for the universal extension of the single gold standard shall have been given up to, there will not only take place an immense rise in gold and fall in silver, to the greatest injury to all lands, but the greater constancy in the value of the legal medium of payment based upon the mixed standard will be lost."

The former grounds against the possibility of the use at the same time of two measures of value with a relation fixed by law, did not suffice against this statement of the question. The commercial disadvantages of the existing alternative standard would

remain as before, and still appear to be out-weighed by unthoughtof advantages.

However instructive this argument of Wolowski's is, we will nevertheless attempt to show that he is in error, even on the point upon which, especially, the practical execution of his proposal depends.

It dare not remain as something of little importance, that the state, with intention and effective means, is disposed to give special advantages to one portion of its citizens, the debtors, at the cost of another portion, the creditors. If "favoring in doubt" can be looked upon, at best, as an unavoidable evil, "favoring in every case" is certainly an open, glaring injustice. It is an aggravation of this assumption, that we as yet do not know how to free ourselves from the delusion that in our modern commerce the creditors are only to be regarded as rich, lazy landlords, against whom we are to aid the poor, depressed creditor; just as in former centuries they were taken under the arms and lifted out of their troubles by means of prohibitions and restrictions of interest, by moratoria, and release from debts. Can the state, the joint-stock company, the member of an insurance company, etc., be allowed to appear to us as the weak member which legislation must prop up against the thousands and thousands of persons in the lower and middle walks of life, who have gathered together a modest income for a rainy day in savings banks, stocks and securities? The trading class will not be slow in taking advantage of this intended injury to creditors, by means of opportunely carried out operations in the international trade with the precious metals. But every one should be far from reproaching this class of traders for trying to realize something out of the double standard. On the contrary, these operations are, where the double standard exists, unavoidable and to be seen beforehand. When, however, as in the French Enquête of 1868, and often at other times, "the highest authorities upon French trade," as the banker Alphonso Rothschild, declare themselves against the abolition of the double standard, one can add to their grounds another: The maintenance of the double standard is a fine fountain of gain for the international trade of these very "authorities."

If then the double standard is to avoid the greater changes in value which have to be undergone with the single standard, the acknowledgment must at once be made that the double standard, for the very reason that it acts in that peculiar manner, brings