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• Translator's Preface
• Section I.: Preliminary Observations.
• Chapter I.: The Question Stated
• Chapter II.: Preliminary Observations On the Rise of Prices Which Has Characterised the Last Few Years.
• Section II.: An Appeal to Some of the Fundamental Notions Upon the Nature and Characteristics of Money.
• Chapter I.: What We Ought to Understand By Value and Price.—twofold Definition of Money.—the Standard Or Fineness of Money.
• Chapter II.: Of the Meaning of the Word Standard.— the Metal-standard Is That From Which Is Derived the Monetary Unit.—the Two Ideas Standard and Monetary Unit Imply Each the Other.
• Chapter III.: Of the Character of Exchanges As Affected By the Invention of Money —how the Rise and Fall of the Precious Metals Are Manifested In the Course of Trade.—phenomena of the Rise and Fall In Commodities.
• Chapter IV.: On the Possibility of Conferring the Quality of Standard Upon Two Metals At Once.
• Chapter V: Of the Meaning of Certain Words Specially Applicable to Money and the Precious Metals.—price, Value, Premium, Dearness, Cheapness
• Section III.: Of the Present Production of Gold and Its Outlet.
• Chapter I.: Of the Increase In the Present Production of Gold As Compared With the Past —the Extended Coinage of Gold Which Has Followed.
• Chapter II.: Diminished Coinage of Silver In France—gold Is Already At a Discount In Comparison With Silver.
• Chapter III.: Extraordinary Exportation of Silver From the Civilised Countries of the Western World Towards India and China —to What Extent It Is Likely to Continue.
• Chapter IV.: France Serves Temporarily As a Parachute to Retard the Fall of Gold.
• Chapter V.: Whether the Extraordinary Production of Gold Ought to Be Considered As an Ephemeral Accident.—the Crushing of the Quartz Veins —mines In Siberia and Elsewhere.
• Section IV.: On the New Outlet That May Be Expected For the Production of the New Gold Mines, and Whether It Will Be In Proportion to the Extent of This Production.
• Chapter I.: Of the Outlet Afforded By Those Countries Which At Present Have Evidently an Insufficient Proportion of Metal In Their Currencies.
• Chapter II.: Of the Increase of Gold Money Which May Arise From the Development of Business, and the Increase of Population.—of Wear and Tear.—of Hoarding.—of Shipwrecks.
• Chapter III.: On the Employment Which Habits of Luxury May Offer to the Gold of the New Mines.
• Chapter IV.: Conclusion of the Preceding Chapters.—the Fall of Gold Very Probable, If Not Inevitable, In Relation to All Other Commodities.
• Section V.
• Chapters I. to V.: On the Part Assigned to Gold In the Monetary Legislation of France.
• Section VI.: Consequences of the Fall In the Value of Gold.
• Chapter I.: A General Distinction Between Those Private Incomes Which Will, and Those Which Will Not Be Affected. of a Certain Collective Loss Which the People of France Will Suffer.
• Chapter II.: Of the Sufferings and Difficulties Which Will Accompany the Transition.
• Chapter III.: On the Gain Which Would Result to Certain Classes of Persons, and to Society, From the Fall In Gold. the Saving to the State From the Payment of the Dividends On the Public Debt.
• Section VII.: Of the Measures to Be Taken to Avert the Evil Effects of the Fall of Gold.
• Chapter I.: Case of a State Like England, Where Gold Is the Standard, and Where There Is No Other Money But Gold.
• Chapter II.: Case of a State Such As France, Where There Is a Silver Standard, But Also a Gold Currency.
• Chapter III.: The Measure Here Recommended Is a Necessary Complement of the Law of Germinal, Year XI.
• Chapter IV.: On Some Inconveniences Inherent In the Combination, Respecting a Gold Currency, Recommended In This Work.
• Chapter V.: Of a Plan Recommended For Maintaining the Parallel Circulation of Silver and Gold.
• Chapter VI.: Of the Resolutions of a Commission Appointed By the Minister of Finance In Mdccclvii.
• Chapter VII.: Of Various Acts Which the Legislation of the Ancient Regime Upon Money Treated As Crimes, and With Regard to Which Some Persons of Our Day Propose to Establish Penalties. —selecting, and Melting; Trade In Coins; Exportation.
• Chapter VIII.: Of a Different Solution Which Has Been Recommended, and Which Would Consist In the Adoption of a Gold Standard.
• Chapter IX.: Appreciation of the System Which Consists In Adjourning Indefinitely the Legislative Solution.

CHAPTER V.

whether the extraordinary production of gold ought to be considered as an ephemeral accident.—the crushing of the quartz veins —mines in siberia and elsewhere.

The new gold mines, will they continue to be what they are? The abundance of metal, will it remain indefinitely the same, and will there be always the same facilities for working it”? To sum up in a word, will the production remain as great, or, like a meteor, will it dazzle for an instant, suddenly to disappear? On this subject, there might be room for a long controversy, of which the result must still be liable to some uncertainty, owing to the want of sufficiently precise and authentic information. However, we are warranted in saying that the continuance of a large production presents itself in the perspective, surrounded with a very great probability.

Eminent geologists, at the time when the first news of the marvels of California arrived, remarked, with truth, that the alluvial deposits in which gold is found, and on which to the present day nearly all the successful workings have been carried on, are liable to speedy exhaustion. They, on that occasion, reminded us that many countries have had, in the earlier period of their civilisation, mines of gold and silver, and that after a short time all remains of them disappeared, even to the extent of leaving no traces of their existence in the traditions of the inhabitants. Might not this be taken as a warning of the early exhaustion of the mines of California and Australia?

There are very striking calculations to be produced in an opposite sense. Supposing that the soils the most advantageously workable of these regions yield in gold the hundred-thousandth part of their weight,* it would be necessary, for obtaining one kilogramme of metal, to wash 50 cubic metres of gravel or sand. It follows that, supposing an auriferous bed to be of the thickness of a metre (about 39 inches), then a hectare (about 2½ acres) will have heen exhausted with the extraction of 200 kilogrammes, and that thus an annual extraction of 120,000 kilogrammes of fine gold, which, on the hasis estahlished hy the law of the year 11, would he equal to 400 millions of francs in gold coins (£16,000,000), would exhaust 600 hectares; and 60,000 hectares would he sufficient for an extraction, at this rate, of a century. Now 60,000 hectares are only half the area of one French department,— a very small space in comparison with the total superficies of countries so vast as Australia and California. The conditions in which the deposits of ore are found in California and Australia are such thart it is not a very sanguine view to suppose that in each of these countries alluvial ground will he found, equal to 60,000 hectares of deposits of a metre in thickness, and of the richness of 1 to 100,-000. There are several ways in which such a field of operations may be arrived at, for it must he borne in mind that frequently these auriferous banks are much more than a metre in thickness; nor must it be forgotten that their richness may greatly exceed that of 1 to 100,000. In fact this return is not the minimum below which the extraction would necessarily cease to be profitable; it is very far from it. There have been worked, and are now being worked, in all the auriferous regions, some banks, the produce of which is not one-fifth or one-sixth as much as the above.

It will be readily conceived, after the considerations I have submitted to the reader, that we should soon exhaust the deposits-in those countries where the auriferous ground was very limited in extent, and was only met with in the bottoms of valleys. But that is not the case in California, or Australia. The golden alluvions are there spread over a far wider space; they are found not only on the banks of rivers, and in their beds, but are scattered over the surface of vast plains.

It has been seen also that hitherto the miners of Australia and California have confined themselves to the more tempting deposits, that they have been skimming the cream, and that henceforth they must expect their work to be much less productive. There is, undoubtedly, some truth in this observation. But then it must also be remembered that they have not yet explored the whole surface, and that there is reason to believe that, in California and Australia, there are many rich and extensive deposits still to discover; indeed, they are constantly in the course of discovery. It may also be urged that, if the natural facilities for extraction do not remain unimpaired, the processes of working may be so improved as to compensate, in some degree, for the diminished fertility of the mines; and this improvement is not something appertaining to the remote future; it is a fact which is realised every day. The report of Dr. Trask shows a marked increase in the productive force of the miner between 1852 and 1854. On the contrary, in Australia, in the colony of Victoria, the most important of all the mining districts, the commission which presented the report already referred to describes the deposits as declining in richness continually from 1852 to 1854; but, at the same time, it reckoned on the improved processes of extraction for compensating to some extent the impoverishment of the mines, even if the falling off were to be permanent, which is doubtful; subsequently to this report, that is to say in 1855 and 1856, the results of the workings appear to have improved in Australia.

It is a fact, however, upon which there is now hardly room to doubt, that the miners will no longer confine themselves to the washing of the metal from the alluvions where nature had deposited it, after having herself pulverised and ground the rocky mass in which it had been imprisoned. In California and Australia, but especially the former of these countries, the industry of man, armed with a powerful instrument, does not fear to attack the veins of quartz which conceal, in scattered grains, the precious metal. The alluvions themselves are worked with more intelligence and a better organisation of labour than heretofore. Companies, more or less powerful, have constructed or are constructing canals to bring the water required for washing the auriferous earth. A better division of labour has been established among the mining population, and, in fine, the utensils and the processes of washing are greatly improved.

If it were necessary to sum up with the expression of an opinion on the future of Australia and California, I should say, that, even if it were admitted to be quite improbable that the production of the precious metal which has been maintained to our day should be permanent, or, to repeat the same thing in other words, that the average yield of a day's labour should be undiminished, it is difficult not to admit our belief that the mines of these two countries must, for yet a long series of years, produce gold in such quantities and on such conditions as to render a marked decline in its value inevitable. This is exactly as if we said that in all those countries where, as in England, gold is unquestionably the monetary standard, as well ab in those where, as in France, it is left in possession of this attribute, there is ground for predicting a progressive rise in the price of articles of subsistence and raw materials. The price of manufactures would rise in the same proportion, if the improvements hi machinery, much more easily effected in manufacturing than in agricultural processes, did not partially or completely counteract this rising tendency.

In the preceding statement I have hardly alluded to the gold mines of Russia, the production of which has hitherto remained considerably below that of the mines of Australia and California, although in one year they have yielded 30,000 kilogrammes, or upwards of 100 millions of francs (£4,000,000). The two following facts, however, ought not to be lost sight of:—1st. The auriferous deposits of the Northern and Eastern regions of the Russian Empire are literally of a gigantic extent; from all the information we at present possess they would appear to be even the largest in the world. 2ndly. In richness —by which I mean the quantity of gold contained in a cubic metre of the sand or gravel composing the beds of the auriferous alluvions—they are hardly surpassed by those of Australia and California.

The mines of Siberia have had this advantage, that eminent scientific men have made them the subject of their most serious study, having, for that purpose, personally visited those regions. At the request of the Emperor Nicholas, Baron Humboldt himself made in 1829, in company with some very distinguished savans, a long journey in the countries through which extend the chains of the Oural and Altai mountains, and from that time he has carefully collected and condensed all the information that has transpired respecting this quarter of the world; and hence sprung his work upon Central Asia, published in 1843. Towards this latter period an English geologist of deserved celebrity, Sir Roderick Murchison, explored a portion of the gold mines of Russia, the results of which he has published.*

For a series of years the Russian government has been careful to make Europe directly acquainted with all that passes in these auriferous regions. A special publication, which has been for some years suspended, l'Annuaire desMines de Riussie, contained periodically on this subject some reports and memoirs of very great interest. We thus know that the region occupied by the chain of the Oural, which is that to which for the first years the mining operations were confined, offered an immense field for the industry of man, for this chain is not less than 1,900 kilometres (about 1,200 miles) in length; but to the East of the Oural, in Siberia, the gold regions expand to prodigious dimensions. From the Kamschatka and the Ouskoi mountains, the foot of which is washed by the Pacific Ocean, as far as the meridian of Perm, to the West of the Oural, over a distance which embraces the half of a circle which would be described in making the circuit of the globe on those latitudes, the auriferous deposits are distributed in numerous groups and over a large surface, and the zone over which they are spread is of an average width of 900 kilometres (about 550 miles). Baron Humboldt has remarked that the presence of gold over this immense surface is one of the phenomena the most general to be found on the globe. Moreover, the richness of these auriferous alluvions is very decidedly superior to that of those found in the Oural.

With the new and improved spirit displayed by the Russian administration since the accession of the present Emperor, and with the more active impulse given to industry in this vast Empire, we may reasonably expect that the production of gold in Northern Russia will henceforth experience a large increase. The Emperor Nicholas, in 1849, (edict of the 14th-26th April), raised an obstacle to the development of the mining operations of Siberia. He subjected them to a progressive tax, which for the larger undertakings, those which returned upwards of 40 poods of metal (655 kilogrammes or 2,170,000 francs, £86,800), amounted to 30 or 35 per cent, on the gross produce, independent of the special tax for police purposes: for the great undertakings, this was 9 to 10 roubles (36 to 40 francs—30s. to 33s. 4d.) the pound of metal of the Mint standard. Such heavy charges could not fail to limit the extraction. Previously the State levied on private enterprise a tax of 15 per cent., independently of a rate for the police, and which was sufficiently heavy; these regulations are still in force in the mining districts of the Oural.

This is not the place to inquire whether the government of the Emperor Nicholas had good reasons for increasing to this extent the amount of taxation imposed upon the miners of Siberia. At the period when the duty of from 30 to 35 per cent, was established, there might have been good arguments to justify it. But with the competition which the mining operations of California and Australia offer to those of Siberia, these high duties cannot be sustained. It is the interest of Russia to bring her gold to market before the fall assumes a more decided character, for she will otherwise incur a loss by retarding the production of the metal.

It is not out of place here to allude to some contingencies which, in addition to the production of new gold, may cause an increased quantity to flow towards the Christian nations. There is one among others of which I may say that it is not altogether without probability; I allude to the breaking down of the barrier of exclusive-ness, which has hitherto completely shut out the nations of the West from the Empire of Japan. The tendency of events passing in the remote east, the direct steps that have been taken by the American and Russian squadrons with the Japanese government, and the treaties concluded in consequence of these visits, not only with Russia and the United States, but also with Holland, all presage for an early period the establishment of important relations between the Japanese Archipelago and the Christian world. Now, the information we already possess relative to Japan, leaves no room to doubt that gold is there at a comparatively low price; persons go so far as to say that the relation between gold and silver in Japan is hardly above that of 1 to 3. Such is, for instance, the statement in a letter, dated the 6th July, 1857, addressed by the Consul of the United States, at Simoda, Mr. Townsend Harris, to his colleague at Hong Kong. He there very expressly states that the relation between gold and silver is only as 1 to 3 1/7. The sole object of the letter is to bring the fact to the knowledge of the Americans who trade with China, in order that they may profit by it, so that, from this moment, they possess the faculty of doing so. Can there be a doubt, then, that there will soon be an exportation of a large portion of the gold to be found in Japan? It is well, however, to add that the quantity of this gold is not known, and that probably it is not very considerable.

It is not irrelevant here to add that a Mexican province, which is supposed to conceal very rich mines of gold, comparable to the deposits of California itself, that of Sonora, appears destined to share the same fate as California, of which it is the neighbour, by falling into the hands of the United States. There are many indications which warrant the belief that this event is not distant. If it were to occur, and if, moreover, the mines of Sonora were to justify the reputation they have acquired with very enlightened travellers, whose testimony has been favourably quoted by Baron Humboldt himself,* we might expect à considerable force added to the effects produced by California and Australia; for the inhabitants of the United States would not display less energy and enterprise there than they have already exhibited in the valleys of the Sacramento and the San Joaquim.

Under circumstances similar to those which I have rapidly enumerated, the only way to prevent a fall in the value of gold, and a consequent rise in the price of commodities, would be the discovery of a new demand, equal in extent to the increased supply thrown upon the markets of the Western World. Thus only, the relation of supply and demand remaining the same, would people be able to procure the precious metal on the same conditions as at present, that is, they would be obliged to give in exchange the same quantity of com or labour. Is the opening of such an outlet possible or probable? Let us investigate the subject.

SECTION IV.

on the new outlet that may be expected for the production of the new gold mines, and whether it will be in proportion to the extent of this production.

What are the additional purposes to which gold may be applied, and will they be sufficiently extensive to balance the increased production? And, first, as to the place it will find in the monetary system of the various countries where at present paper forms the principal instrument of exchange, and which are desirous of giving to their circulation the ballast of a greater quantity of metal, and particularly of gold. The United States and Austria are especially cited as being of this category. Turkey is also spoken of as a country where money of every kind is very rare. In the next place we are reminded of the necessity which exists in those countries sufficiently supplied with a metallic currency of calling in and restoring the coinage; that is, of replacing the portions of each coin which have been lost in circulating from hand to hand, and which, in the aggregate, amounts to a large sum; it is called the wear and tear. With reference to all the countries where gold is used for money, we are told also that the quantity of coins in circulation must be augmented in proportion to the constantly increasing population, and to the progressive movement of commercial affairs throughout the civilised world. Then it is said that the growing luxury will call for the fabrication of a great quantity of jewellery, of plate, and gold lace; that to this must be added an increase in gilding, of which so much is in use, especially in Paris. Some other modes are cited, by which we are told a certain proportion of metal is to be absorbed; as, for instance, by hoarding and by shipwrecks.

Let us try to form an idea of the quantity of gold that may be required for all these different destinations. Let us inquire whether the outlets which they offer, naturally and without effort, to this precious metal, be likely to be such that a large floating mass of it will not remain upon the market; for if it be otherwise, if the various employments which have just been enumerated, should not be sufficient to absorb nearly the whole quantity of gold to be produced, and that, in spending it, almost on the same conditions as at present, that is to say, in exchanging it for nearly the same quantity of corn or labour, the consequence will be inevitable: gold, to find a market, will be obliged to submit to the law which governs all commodities in excess—to lower its price; in other words, the phenomenon of a rise in the price of raw materials, articles of subsistence, and merchandise, will infallibly present itself.

[*]This is the quality or rather the yield (which is very different when worked in an inferior manner) of the rich fields of production in Siberia. In the Oural mountains they wash with success sands which contain only a fourth or a fifth of the above proportion, that is to say, one kilogramme in 400,000 or 500,000. In the valley of the Rhine, the most favoured spots, those which the gold-washers hunt for, and on which they concentrate all their efforts, contain only 1 kilogramme in 7 millions. According to various accounts, the yield of good soils in California and Australia is often as much as 1 in 100,000.

[*]The reader is referred to an address delivered to the Geographical Society of London, the 27th of May, 1844, by Sir Roderick Murchison, then President of the Society.—(Address to the Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Geographical Society.)

[*]Essay on New Spain, Vol. II., p. 240. See also the work of M. Saint Clair Duport,—Production des Métaux Précieux au Mexique, p. 202; and that of M. Duflot de Mofras,—Exploration du Territoire de l'Oregon, des Californies, et de la mer vermeille pendant les années 1840, 1841, and 1842. Volume I., p. 206 to 212.