“When a nominal money submits to variations in value as great as those which have been noted in silver, it becomes provisionally inapt for its functions. Commercial enterprises, based upon this metal, become extremely dangerous, and are no longer attempted by those who wish to operate only with the security attached to studied and matured plans. But all the commerce with the East is based upon silver, which, for these countries, is the nominal money. When the value of silver, and, following it, the course of exchange, became subject to oscillations of ten and fifteen per cent., there was no longer any security for international commerce. The cost of despatching and of selling raw material or manufactured goods could no longer be precisely fixed; and the most careful merchant became a speculator in spite of himself. He then stopped, and by that very act he added to the difficulty of the situation. The fall in the value of silver broke the charm exercised by the constant augmentation of the stock of metals put at the disposal of international enterprises. “This is the third element in the advance of progress which has disappeared in its turn; and we may thus sum up: “1. The lenders are not willing, provisionally, to enter upon new schemes. “2. The borrowers, weary or feeble, are incapable of giving birth to new illusions. “3. The monetary crisis has added its action to these two negative elements. “So that to-day, after proper deliberation, people decide to do nothing; or, at least, to do nothing under the former conditions of international enterprises.” But is it admissible that we shall do nothing henceforth, and that the present situation will prolong itself indefinitely? No, assuredly; and, so far as this goes, M. De Laveleye recognizes with every one that the stagnation of business cannot endure, that a reaction is inevitable, and that it will come in its time. “But,” he hastens to add, “this return to activity will not be produced at all in the form known and hoped for by those who have seen the revivals of speculation after the crises of 1837, 1857, and 1866; and this for the logical reason that the industrial, commercial, financial, and speculative activity of the middle of this century has had for its base and aim the economical furnishing of the world (_l’outillage économique du monde_), and that this furnishing is very nearly completed. “The base and the object of the former activity will no longer exist, or scarcely so. We must, then, wait for a profound modification in the form and conditions of this activity. “This is why we have called the present crisis a permanent, a final crisis”—_une crise définitive_.