This argument, which is pure delusion, exercises quite as much influence as the other two. If the franc is worth more, wages, it is argued, which are paid in francs, will surely buy more, and French imports, which are paid for in francs, will be so much cheaper. No! If francs are worth more they will buy more labour as well as more goods,--that is to say, wages will fall; and the French exports, which pay for the imports, will, measured in francs, fall in value just as much as the imports. Nor will it make in the long run any difference whatever in the amount of goods the value of which England will have to transfer to America to pay her dollar debts, whether in the end sterling settles down at four dollars to the pound, or at its pre-war parity. The burden of this debt depends on the value of gold, in terms of which it is fixed, not on the value of sterling. It is not easy, it seems, for men to apprehend that their money is a mere intermediary, without significance in itself, which flows from one hand to another, is received and is dispensed, and disappears when its work is done from the sum of a nation’s wealth. * * * * * In concluding this section, let me quote on the issue between Deflation and Devaluation two classic authorities, Gibbon and Ricardo, the one to represent the imposing but false wisdom of the would-be upright statesman, the other to speak in clear tones the voice of instructed reason. In the eleventh chapter of _The Decline and Fall_, Gibbon deems incredible a story of how in A.D. 274 Aurelian’s deflationary zeal to restore the integrity of the coin excited an insurrection which caused the death of 7000 soldiers. “We might naturally expect,” he says, “that the reformation of the coin should have been an action equally popular with the destruction of those obsolete accounts, which by the emperor’s order were burnt in the forum of Trajan. In an age when the principles of commerce were so imperfectly understood, the most desirable end might perhaps be effected by harsh and injudicious means; but a temporary grievance of such a nature can scarcely excite and support a serious civil war. The repetition of intolerable taxes, imposed either on the land or on the necessaries of life, may at last provoke those who will not or who cannot relinquish their country. But the case is far otherwise in every operation which, by whatsoever expedients, restores the just value of money.”