As regards national debts, it is distinctly averred that neither gold nor silver forms a just measure of deferred payments, and that if justice in long contracts is sought for, we should not seek it by the doubtful and untried expedient of international bimetallism, but by the clear and certain method of a multiple standard, a unit based upon the selling prices of a number of articles of general consumption. A long time contract would thereby be paid at its maturity by the same purchasing power as was given in the beginning. Jevons, one of the most generally accepted of the writers in favor of a gold standard, admits the instability of a single standard, and in language very similar to that above quoted suggests the multiple standard as the most equitable, if practicable. Chevalier, who wrote a book in 1858 to show the injustice of allowing a debtor to pay his debts in a cheap gold dollar, recognized the same fact, and said: If the value of the metal declined, the creditor would suffer a loss upon the quantity he had received; if, on the contrary, it rose, the debtor would have to pay more than he calculated upon. I am on sound and scientific ground, therefore, when I say that a dollar approaches honesty as its purchasing power approaches stability. If I borrow a thousand dollars to-day and next year pay the debt with a thousand dollars which will secure exactly as much of all things desirable as the one thousand which I borrowed, I have paid in honest dollars. If the money has increased or decreased in purchasing power, I have satisfied my debt with dishonest dollars. While the government can say that a given weight of gold or silver shall constitute a dollar, and invest that dollar with legal-tender qualities, it cannot fix the purchasing power of the dollar. That must depend upon the law of supply and demand, and it may be well to suggest that this government never tried to fix the exchangeable value of a dollar until it began to limit the number of dollars coined. II. BY M. W. HOWARD. The term, "a standard of value," so often used, is erroneous and misleading. There can be no fixed standard of value, and the student who wishes to delve into our financial problems should clear his mind of such a fallacy at the very threshold of his investigations. Money is a commodity; it is regulated by the same laws of supply and demand which regulate the price of corn, cotton, wheat, land, labor, etc. If the wheat crop is short, wheat will be dear; if abundant, it will be cheap. So with money. If the money supply is not sufficient to meet the demands of business and commerce,--if the money crop is short, in other words,--the money will be dear; it will command too high a price, its purchasing power will be too great.