The opinion has been expressed that these two propositions differ only in degree. From this opinion I must express my earnest dissent. It is the very cardinal point of my present argument. Wolowski’s alternate standard seems to me to rest upon the belief that legislation of the kind proposed would restrict the fluctuations in value of the metals. It affirms that legislation would have a certain tendency. Any plan for a concurrent circulation giving debtors the use of the whole mass of both metals pretends to say how far the tendency would go and what its results would be. To my mind the difference between those two propositions is that between a scientific and an unscientific proposition. We have a parallel case before us. Some say re-monetization would cause an advance in silver. Others say re-monetization would make a four hundred and twelve and one-half grain silver dollar equal in value to a gold one. Are those two propositions the same save in degree? It seems to me that only a very superficial consideration of them could so declare. Obviously they differ in quality more than in degree. The former of these propositions is not false in principle; the question in regard to it must be decided by circumstances. The second is false and erroneous from beginning to end, and would be false even if temporarily and by force of circumstances the silver dollar should become equal to the gold dollar, because it rests, like the old doctrine that nature abhors a vacuum, upon false views of all the forces involved. Just so with regard to a concurrent circulation or bimetallism as compared with the alternate standard. The latter predicts tendencies to arise from the play of certain forces. Those tendencies are the true effect of those forces. The question may be raised whether the means proposed would bring those forces into action, whether they would be as great as is expected, whether they would be counteracted by others, but there is no error as to the nature and operation of economic forces. Bimetallism predicts results, not tendencies. It assumes to measure the consequences and say what will result as a permanent state of things. It therefore involves the doctrine that legislation can control natural forces for definite results. If legislation cannot so control natural forces, then we cannot secure a concurrent circulation, giving the debtor the use of the whole mass of both metals with which to pay his debts. At a time like this, when the silver craze seems to be asserting itself as a mania, by sweeping away some who ought to be most staunch in their adherence to economic laws and most clear in their perception of economic truths, I may be pardoned for insisting most strenuously upon this distinction and upon its importance. Many of the American writers have been betrayed into error by not having examined these two plans and discriminated between them with sufficient care. It is very common