“The fluctuations in the price of gold which attracted so much attention were much more moderate than the extreme fluctuations in the prices of commodities. The gold quotations lay all the time well within the outer limits of the field covered by the variations of commodity prices. … During the war gold moved up or down in price more quickly than the mass of commodities. … When gold was rising in price the majority of the commodities followed, but more slowly. … When gold was falling in price the majority of commodities stood still or followed more slowly. … This more sluggish movement of commodity prices appears still more clearly after the war. Rapid as was the fall of prices it was not so rapid as the falling gold. A more curious fact is that the price-level for commodities continued for ten years to be higher than the price-level for gold.” This shows that the test sought to be applied by the adherents of the exchange standard is a false one and gives an inaccurate reading of the value of a currency. There can be no doubt that people who have urged its application to that standard would not have pressed for it so much as they have done if they had taken proper care to distinguish between _specific_ depreciation of a currency and its _general_ [pg 243] depreciation.³⁷³ The experience of the Bank of England during the suspension period is a capital instance of the phenomenon where a currency is generally depreciated, although it showed no sign of specific depreciation:— ³⁷³ Cf. Prof. Nicholson’s _Principles of Political Economy_ (1897), Vol. II, Chap. XV, § 4; and Walker, F. A., _Money_, 1878, pp. 387–91. _TABLE L_ _Depreciation of the Notes of the Bank of England_³⁷⁴