suffice for the currency needs, how could international agreement prevent the former from driving the latter entirely out of circulation? On the other hand, international agreement, far from discouraging, would encourage the process. ²²⁵ Cf. _Contemporary Review_ for March, 1887. It is interesting to note that essentially the same plan was suggested 115 years before Prof Marshall by James Stewart when his advice was sought by the East India Company as to the method of reforming the then chaotic currency of Bengal. He refrained from pressing it upon the Company because he thought “mankind were not all philosophers.” Cf. his _Principles of Money as applied to the Present State of the Coin of Bengal_ (2nd Edition, 1772), pp. 8–11; cf. also William Ward, _On Monetary Derangements, in a Letter addressed to the Proprietors of Bank Stock_, London, 1840, p. 8. ²²⁶ Cf. Prof. Foxwell, _Oxford Economic Review_, 1893, Vol. III, p. 297. ²²⁷ Cf. the reply by Prof. Cannan, _ibid._, p. 457. In adopting bimetallism, therefore, the nations had to make a choice between a stable ratio and a concurrent circulation, for there might arise a situation in which there was a stable ratio but no concurrent circulation of both the metals. If the Conferences broke down, it was not because they did not recognize the possibility which was unanimously upheld by such an impartial tribunal as the Gold and Silver Commission of 1886 of a stable ratio being maintained under a bimetallic regime. They broke down because the bimetallic system did not guarantee the concurrent circulation of the two metals. However, it is certain the impossibility of concurrent circulation could not have been such a drawback if the immediate effect of bimetallism would have been a flow of gold into circulation. But as matters [pg 139] then stood the immediate effect would have been to bring silver into circulation. It was this more than anything else which scared away most of the nations from the adoption of the bimetallic system. Now, it is a curious thing that nations which had assembled together to wring about a stable ratio between gold and silver should have rejected a system which gave a promise of such a stability on the comparatively less significant ground that it had the effect of altering the composition of the circulation from gold to silver. But the fact must be recognized that at the time the question of reconstituting the bimetallic system was agitating the public mind, in most of the European countries gold and silver had ceased to be regarded as equally good for currency purposes. The superiority of gold to silver as a carrier of large value in small bulk was coming more and more to be appreciated in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and no plan of stabilization which did not provide for the unhindered circulation of gold was likely to meet with common approval.