From these figures it would seem that the trouble, if monometallists are right in saying there is trouble there, is due not to their having too much silver, but that they do not have enough. Not having enough, they have followed the usual course of nations lacking a sufficient coin basis, and have issued a great volume of irredeemable paper money. By reference to the authority above cited, you will find that they have in circulation $560,000,000 in paper money. One fourth of all the uncovered paper in the world is in those countries, though their total population is less than that of the United States. Who will say that it will be a calamity to them to coin $200,000,000 more in silver and retire that much of their uncovered paper? =Gold ought to be the standard metal, because, apart from its use as money, it has a fixed intrinsic value.= There is no such thing as intrinsic value. Qualities are intrinsic; value is a relation between exchangeable commodities, and, in the eternal nature of things, never can be invariable. Value is of the mind; it is the estimate placed upon a salable article by those able and willing to buy it. I have seen water sell on the Sahara at two francs a bucketful. Was that its intrinsic value? If so, what is its intrinsic value on Lake Superior? =Well, if what you say be true, there is no intrinsic value in any of the precious metals, and we cannot have an invariable standard of value at all.= No more than an invariable standard of friendship or love. Value is, in fact, a purely ideal relation. All this talk about an invariable dollar which shall be like the bushel measure or the yard stick is the merest claptrap. The fact that gold men stoop to such language goes far to prove that their contention is wrong. The argument violates the very first principle of mental philosophy, in that it applies the fixed relations of space, weight, and time to the operations of the mind. Would you say a bushel of discontent or eighteen inches of friendship? Men who compare the dollar to the pound weight or yard stick are talking just that unscientifically. Invariable value being an impossibility, and an invariable standard of value a correlative impossibility, all we can do is to select those commodities which vary the least and use them as a measure for other things; but you will not find in any economic writer that any metal is a fixed standard. And this brings me to consider that singular piece of folly which furnishes the basis of so much monometallist literature, namely, that gold is less variable in value than silver, and that one metal as a basis varies less than two. Some of our statesmen have got themselves into such a condition of mind on this point as to really believe that, while all other products of human labor are changing in value, gold alone is gifted with the great attribute of God--immutability. It is sheer blasphemy. It is conclusively proved, and by many different