It was then announced with all the dogmatism of authority that silver was unfit to be used as money. Defects were suddenly discovered in it that the scrutiny of three thousand years had failed to disclose. Its weight and bulk were found to be insuperable obstacles to its use as money. Yet the specific gravity of silver is no greater now than it has been for all the ages during which it has been used as money by all mankind, nor is it any heavier or more bulky than it was in 1851 or 1857, when Belgium, Germany, and Austria demonetized gold and made the "heavy," "bulky," and "inconvenient" metal, silver, their only money metal. Silver can now be transported from place to place with less risk and at no greater expense than gold, and at much less cost than at any previous period in the history of the world. The objection that silver is too heavy for the pocket is an objection common to all metallic money. We see hardly any gold in circulation in this country--infinitely less than of silver. When our people have a choice as to the form in which they will take money they prefer paper representatives as being the most convenient. The extraordinary perfection to which the arts of the engraver and paper maker have been brought gives paper money a security against counterfeiting and imitation far superior to any immunity which can be claimed for the metals. The marvellous inventions of modern times in the form of safes and vault-locks render it a matter of practically no risk to store the metals, both silver and gold, so that paper representatives of them may be issued. These representatives are preferred by the general mass of the people, and have almost entirely occupied the channels of circulation to the exclusion of both metals. A silver certificate for $1,000 weighs no more than a gold certificate for the same amount. THE MOTIVE FOR DEMONETIZING SILVER. The motive for the demonetization of silver was precisely the same that had previously inspired the demonetization of gold. The object was to demonetize one of the metals--that metal which promised the greatest abundance, and which would contribute most largely to maintaining at an equitable level the general range of prices. The motive in both cases was to aggrandize the privileged classes--the income and the creditor classes of the world--and by means of a subtle and sinister manipulation of the money volume, whose effects it is not always easy to trace to their true cause, to practically confiscate the reward of the hard toil of the masses. To all intent and purpose the design was to establish a new system of slavery for the western world, of which the debtor classes among the white races should be the victims. When demonetization was determined on there was no pretense that there was any difficulty in maintaining a parity between the two metals at the established ratio.