This contention is not tenable in reason. It is directly against the concentrated faith of the ages. Gold is desirable for the sake of its own special virtues, and it becomes additionally valuable when employed as the medium of exchange among nations. It is because of the universal desire of nations to possess it, that it enjoys its supremacy as money. By its comparative indestructibility it commands and enjoys the proud privilege of being the universal standard of value of the world. It is, therefore, elevated, instead of being degraded, by the impress of the mint stamp, for to its own intrinsic value is added that of being the passport of nations. This is a dignity attained by no other metal. It has been urged that the government guarantee of a solvent nation stamped upon a piece of tin, or wood, or paper, will form a counter quite as valuable as gold for a medium of exchange. So it might, but the circulation would only be within certain limits. A Scotch bank-note is passed from hand to hand with even more confidence than a sovereign—in Scotland. But take one to England and observe the difficulty and often impossibility of changing it. The pound-note is worth a sovereign, but its circulating value is local. Even with a Bank of England note, travellers on the continent occasionally experience some difficulty in effecting a satisfactory exchange. But is there a country in the most rudimentary condition of commerce, where an English sovereign, or a French napoleon, or an American eagle, cannot be at once exchanged at the price of solid gold? It is true that a nation may form a currency of anything, but only a currency of the precious metal can be of universal circulation; and that is simply because the metal is precious. Now, when Bonamy Price said that gold is only wealth in the same sense as a cart is—namely, as a vehicle for fetching that which we desire, he said merely what could be said of wheat or cotton, or any other product of nature and labour usually esteemed wealth. You cannot eat gold, nor can you clothe yourself with wheat; and the trouble of Midas would have been quite as great had his touch transformed everything into cotton shirts. Wealth does not consist in mere possession, but in possessing that which can be used. Wheat and cotton constitute wealth, because one can not only consume them, but in almost all circumstances can exchange them for other things which we desire. But they are perishable, which gold is not—at least for all practical purposes. At the ordinary rate of abrasion, a sovereign in circulation will last many years without any very perceptible loss of weight. Gold, as a possession, is a high form of wealth, because one can either use it or exchange it at pleasure. The fact of there being cases where a man would give all the gold he possesses for a drink of water, does not prove that gold then becomes valueless, but simply that something else has become for the time-being more valuable.