The reasons for the failure of these Conferences to reach a bimetallic agreement have not been properly understood. One cannot read the debates on bimetallism at these Conferences without observing that the opposing parties approached the subject with different objectives. To one the principal objective was the maintenance of a stable ratio of exchange between gold and silver irrespective of the question whether one or both remained in circulation; to the other it was the maintenance of the two metals in concurrent circulation. As a consequence of this difference in the lines of their approach an agreement on a bimetallic project became wellnigh impossible. The workability of bimetallism in the sense of maintaining a stable ratio between gold and silver is necessarily an indefinite proposition. None the less, it cannot be said, if the debates at these Conferences are taken as a guide, that the possibility of a successful bimetallic system in the stable-ratio sense of the term had been denied by the majority of economic theorists, or by the Governments who met at these Conferences. On the other hand, the Conference of 1881, the most important of the three, was remarkable by its confession regarding the workability of the system. All Governments, barring a few minor ones, were in favour of it. Even the British Government, in consenting to bring into operation the silver clause of the Bank Charter Act, must be said to have given its word of approval. But what did bimetallism promise, as a piece of mechanism, to maintain the two metals in concurrent circulation? The bimetallists used to cite the example of France in support of the stability of the double standard. But was there a concurrent circulation of the two metals [pg 137] in France under the bimetallic system? Far from it. For, although it was a virtue of the system that changes in the production of the two metals made no appreciable variations in the fixed ratio of exchange, yet the slightest of such as did occur were sufficient to effect the greatest revolution in the relative circulation of the two metals, as the following table clearly brings out:— TABLE XXIV _Mintage of Gold and Silver in France_²²⁴