Here I am forced to notice another hasty and mischievous analogy. Some devices for composite measures of length have been adopted to avoid contraction and expansion, and it is urged that bimetallic money is a step in the same direction. I by no means assert that science can do nothing to reach a better standard of value than gold is. What progress in that direction may lie in the future no one can tell, and he would be rash who should ever presume to deny that progress can be made; but when any proposition is presented it will have to show what composite measures of length show, _viz._, that its action is founded on natural laws. Heat and cold act oppositely on the components of the composite measures of length, or the arrangement is such that the action of the natural forces neutralizes. No such scientific principle underlies bimetallic money. The forces determining the value of gold and silver act independently of each other and are not subject to common influences. They are complex, moreover, and their effects are not uniform in their different degrees. Therefore this analogy also fails. The opinion that a concurrent circulation is not possible has led several of the leading nations of Europe (and, at the time of writing such is still the system of the United States) to adopt the plan of a permanently false rating of gold and silver, so as to use silver as a subsidiary coinage. Silver is permanently overrated, so that it obtains currency above its bullion value. If the civilized nations want to use silver for money, so that the total amount of metallic money in the Western world shall be greater than the amount of gold, and if they are not satisfied with the use of it as subsidiary, then there is only one way left, and that is for some nations to use gold and some to use silver. This was the solution of the bimetallic difficulty which China was forced to adopt a thousand years ago. Some provinces used iron and some copper. The question then arises as to who will take silver. This brings me to the last point of which I have to speak.