After several prolonged debates, the conference fixed upon $200,000,000 as the maximum quantity which might be added to the world’s supply of gold without disturbing the conditions of trade. When it came to the practical regulation of this supply, there were serious difficulties. The power which it was necessary to delegate to the controlling board was greater than that of kings, greater than had ever been intrusted to the hands of man. They would be virtually the keepers of the world’s purse, the bankers of all Christendom. The power of giving prosperity or adversity to nations, or to one country at the expense of another country, would rest with them. To whose hands could responsibility so vast be safely consigned? There was also the almost inevitable danger of international jealousy in the expenditure of such colossal sums. A higher virtue than patriotism must control the distribution of benefactions for the good of humanity at large, rather than of nations. All the great international projects which had been brought seriously before the world would not consume in their execution half the treasure now at command. The delegates talked in a desultory way of the Nicaragua Canal, great sanitary schemes for purifying the continent of Europe, the stamping out of cholera and other plagues at their source in the East, the irrigation of the western plains in America and of portions of African deserts, the tunneling of the English Channel. They became hopelessly confused and divided upon this branch of the subject, and speedily abandoned it as too vast and too technical for consideration by a temporary assembly. A proposition to divide the gold, which it might be decided to distribute annually, _pro rata_, according to population, among the governments of Europe and America, was rejected after brief consideration. Brent himself ventured to express his disapproval of the suggestion, and his wish was at once respected. Such a plan would lead, he argued, to more extreme militarism in Europe, while in America it would yield merely a temporary easing of the burden of taxation, and a temptation to jobbery at Washington. It would produce no genuine and permanent boon to mankind. All the schemes and suggestions offered finally sifted down to a very simple plan, and four weeks of almost incessant work brought the conference to substantial unanimity in its approval. In brief outline, these were its terms: