That England could well have afforded, throughout the present century, to maintain this system for her own benefit, whatever it cost, even though other nations profited by it in greater or less degree, is clear as the light. That France, a country of far less extended international trade, has been compensated for bearing so large a part as she has done of the burden of maintaining a par-of-exchange for the commerce of the world, by her share of the resulting advantages, I make no question; but it must be admitted to be fairly a matter of dispute. On such a point it is evidence of no small value that the French people themselves and the French statesmen, though singularly acute and sagacious in matters of finance, have apparently not doubted that the bimetallic system was for the interest of their country. Certain of the French political economists--MM. Chevalier, Levasseur, Bonnet, Mannequin, Leroy Beaulieu--from their theory of the subject have held that France lost by her policy in this respect; but the financiers of that remarkable nation held firmly to the "double standard" from 1785 to 1874. And though France at the latter date restricted her silver coinage, and two years later stopped it altogether, it was not done as the result of any change of views. Partly it was from deference to her monetary allies, Belgium and Switzerland, but chiefly because the demonetization of silver by Germany and the sale of the discarded metal of that empire brought a sudden strain upon the bimetallic system which threatened to break it violently down. Hence France closed her mints to silver, but not with any confession that her policy had been erroneous under the conditions previously existing; not from any desire to abandon that policy should the future offer conditions which would admit the resumption of bimetallism. It was the declaration of M. Leon Say, the French Minister of Finance, the President of the International Monetary Conference of 1878, that France, in suspending the coinage of silver, had taken no step towards the single gold standard, but had placed herself in a position to await events, a position which she would not leave till good reasons for action should appear, and then most probably to re-enter on the system of the double standard.... The objection that the stock of the dearer metal in the bimetallic States must, if the drain be indefinitely continued, become after a while exhausted, and that the system will then lose all its efficiency in holding the two metals together, is unquestionably valid; but an altogether unreasonable weight has been assigned to it in the discussion of bimetallism as a scheme of practical statesmanship.