............. 2,675,000,000
And for all other European countries. 3,050,000,000
A total of nearly $31,000,000,000.
Hon. Samuel Smith, M. P., places the mortgages of England at something
over $2,000,000,000, which is more than half the value of the landed
property, and those of Scotland and Ireland (the latter one of the worst
mortgaged countries in the world) make up the grand total given above.
A highly suggestive fact is that, as experience develops the enormous
evils of the monometallic system, the number of conversions among
prominent men to bimetallism steadily increases, and they become more
outspoken and radical in their views.
At the Paris Monetary Conference of 1867, Mr. Mees, President of the Bank
of the Netherlands, protested against a single gold standard and foretold
literally what has followed. Two years later Baron Alphonse de Rothschild
said: "As a sequel we should have to demonetize silver completely. That
would be to destroy an enormous part of the world's capital; that would be
ruin."
At the conference of 1878, Mr. Henry Hucks Gibbs, director and former
governor of the Bank of England, was an advocate of the single gold
standard; but a few years' experience so completely changed his views that
he said: "Mr. Goschen and I were together in the conference in Paris; both
of us were sturdy defenders of gold monometallism; but I have changed my
mind. I do not say Mr. Goschen has changed his mind, but he has somewhat
modified it."
In the Paris Conference of 1878, Mr. Goschen said: "If other states were
to carry on a propaganda in favor of a gold standard and of the
demonetization of silver, the Indian Government would be obliged to
reconsider its position, and might be forced by events to take measures
similar to those taken elsewhere. In that case the scramble to get rid of
silver might provoke one of the gravest crises ever undergone by
commerce."
As it is the fashion of our monometallists to sneer at the possibility of
bimetallism, it may be well to quote here the report of the Royal
Commission on gold and silver, made in 1888. This commission was composed
of six monometallists and six bimetallists, but they assented unanimously
to this proposition:
"SECTION 107. We think that in any conditions fairly to be
contemplated in the future, so far as we can forecast them from
the experience of the past, a stable ratio might be maintained if
the nations we have alluded t
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