eciding. The gold standard, which makes the course of prices depend,
more or less, on the chances of digging up a capricious metal from the
bowels of the earth, has its obvious drawbacks; but it is a clean and
sensible business compared with making them depend on the caprices of
Parliament, complicated by the political corruption that would be only
too likely to follow the putting of such a question into the hands of
our elected and hereditary representatives and rulers.

Such, however, seems to be the Promised Land to which Mr Kitson wants
to lead us. Thus he propounds his remedy. "The remedy is surely
obvious. Divorce our legal tender from its alliance with gold
entirely, so that the supply of money and credit for our home trade is
no longer dependent upon our foreign trade rivals. Base our currency
upon the national credit ... treat gold as a commodity only, for the
settlement of foreign trade balances."

This passage in his article in the September _Supplement_ tells us
what to do. Keep gold, out of deference for foreign prejudice, for the
settlement of foreign trade balances, but make as much paper money as
you like for home use. As our legal tender money is to be "divorced
entirely from its alliance with gold" it clearly cannot be convertible
into gold. So that apparently we shall have a paper pound and a gold
pound (the latter for foreign use) with no connection between them.
This stage of economic barbarism has been left behind now even by
some of the South American republics. The paper pound, based on the
national credit, can be multiplied as fast as our legislators think
fit. If they do not multiply it fast enough, Mr Kitson will tell them
that they are strangling trade, because the volume of production
is limited by the amount of money available. At the same time bank
credits will be multiplied indefinitely because, as was shown in the
November _Supplement_, Mr Kitson supports a view that the average
business man holds (according to him) that he ought to have a legal
right to as much credit as he wants. With the Government printing
paper to please its supporters, with the banks obliged by law to give
credit to every one who asks for it, and with prices soaring on every
addition to currency and credit, what a country this will be to live
in, and what a life will be led by those who have to compile and
work out the index numbers of the prices of commodities! Some of us,
perhaps, will prefer the jog-trot conser