It was with gold then as it came to be with silver afterward, and as it always is with whatever interferes with the interests of privileged classes, intrenched in power and prerogative,--the determination to destroy it being arrived at, measures were taken to prove that the public good required its destruction. While the purpose was to discard the metal, whether gold or silver, which threatened most immediately and seriously to reduce the purchasing power of money, the argument was that a decrease in the purchasing power of money was a calamity against the happening of which every energy should be directed. The privileged classes found then, as they find now, able and ingenious advocates and defenders among the literary and educated guilds of the period. The celebrated De Quincy, in England, attempted to prove, and to his own satisfaction did prove upon figures drawn from his fears and a brilliant imagination, that the least yield of gold to be expected from the mines of California and Australia for an indefinite period in the future, was the yearly sum of $350,000,000. M. Chevalier, in France, vehemently proclaimed the necessity of discarding one of the money metals, and that one not silver but gold. In his work upon the "Fall of Gold" M. Chevalier, in 1856, said: The quantity of gold annually thrown on the general market approaches in round numbers a milliard of francs ($200,000,000). Those two countries (California and Australia) must yet for a long series of years produce gold in such quantities and on such conditions as to render a marked decline in its value inevitable. It is absolutely certain that so vast a production should be accompanied with a great reduction in value. In no direction can a new outlet be seen sufficiently large to absorb the extraordinary production of gold which we are now witnessing, so as to prevent a fall in its value. Unless, then, we possess a very robust faith in the immobility of human affairs, we must regard the fall in the value of gold as an event for which we should prepare without loss of time. The "preparation" which Chevalier advocated was the discarding of that metal which gave promise of the greatest abundance. He did not attempt to hide his purpose. He boldly stated that his object was to enhance the value of money. This object was also clearly expressed on a later occasion by another distinguished advocate of dear money, Mr. Victor Bonnet, of France, in the Journal des Economistes. He said: The world is now saturated with the precious metals, and if there is any danger against which it is necessary to guard, it is that this saturation should become greater. * * *