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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 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.

I will suppose the case of an inhabitant of London, who is possessed at the present time of a certain income, for example, of £ 1,000 sterling. Assuming the event of the fall in the value of gold to have been completely consummated, he will continue to receive, as at present, for every pound sterling composing Ms revenue a metallic disc containing 7 grammes, 318 milligrammes (113 grains) of fine gold, for that is what constitutes the piece called a sovereign, or the pound sterling. But the fall being accomplished, if gold has lost the half of its value, then, in transactions where one piece of gold was previously sufficient, two will be required, so that with the same number of discs the individual in question will only be able to procure in bread, in meat, in all kinds of articles, in every description of gratification, the half of what he would have obtained before this monetary revolution. Thus, in order that he might not be impoverished, in other words, that he might have the same subsistence, it would be necessary that his income should have nominally doubled itself, that it should be £ 2,000 instead of £ 1,000. This observation relative to a person residing in London would apply equally to an inhabitant of Paris, provided we still continue the tolerance, not to say the negligence, by virtue of which gold is unduly circulated on the footing established by the law 7 Germinal, year 11, notwithstanding that events have since overthrown the hypothesis on which, so far as gold is concerned, that law was framed.

It follows, therefore, that if we would particularise the persons who will be more or less deeply affected by the fall in gold, we have only to select those whose income, expressed in monetary units (the pound sterling in England, and the franc in France), will not find itself augmented, naturally and by a self-adjusting process, in exact proportion to the fall, and by the very fact of the fall in gold.

All those persons, whose incomes expressed in monetary units remain the same, would be injured by the change to the extent of the half of their income, all other things being equal. The national creditor is the characteristic type of this class of sufferers.

The proprietor of government stock is in fact the holder of a title by which a certain State engages to pay yearly a given number, agreed upon previously, of francs or pounds sterling; in other words, a well-defined quantity of metal. The current value of the capital of the public funds in each State is regulated by this very quantity; all other things, such as the solvency of the government, the degree of confidence which it inspires, and the abundance of capital upon the market, being equal.

All commodities excepting gold, and every kind of property excepting that of which the income is from the present fixed, as is the case with the government funds, ought, from the moment that the monetary crisis is terminated, to have attained in a gold currency double the price which they are at present worth, upon the supposition, quite arbitrary I admit, of the depreciation reaching fifty per cent. Thus, a house or a landed estate now worth £ 4,000 or 100,000 francs, would then sell for £ 8,000 or 200,000 francs. The hectolitre of corn or of wine, the quintal of iron, or the metre of calico will undergo the same rise, at least if no change conducive to cheapness be introduced into the conditions of their production, or into the relations between the supply and demand. It will be the same eventually with the wages of labour, and with all personal services, whether rendered in the factory or the farm, or from the liberal professions: we are warranted in believing that their value will have doubled.

Thus, as a definitive analysis, the proprietors of lands, houses, and other real estates, manufacturers, merchants, and their auxiliaries of every kind; public functionaries of all ranks; and also those who follow the different learned professions, will all find themselves in the end compensated in the new state of things with advantages equal to those which they now enjoy,—all other things being equal. It is another class of persons, whom we have previously defined in a general way, who would have to submit to a sacrifice in proportion to the fall in the precious metal.

Looking merely to the substitution which would have to be made in the currency of a country like France, where gold is taking the place of silver, that country would experience a sense of very serious disappointment at having exchanged a commodity which has actually a fixed value —its coined silver—for another metal the value of which is declining and must fall one half, according to the supposition which we have made, and which we have adopted solely for clearness of speech and precision of argument. The quantity of silver on which this disastrous exchange had been effected to the 1st January, 1858, was not less than a milliard (£ 40,000,000), which has been bartered for gold at the rate of 15½ kilogrammes of silver against 1 kilogramme of gold. At this rate, France will find at the close of the fall that she has been on an immense scale, almost imitating the trade of a certain sporting individual who, for a wager, passed a morning on London Bridge offering sovereigns to the passengers in exchange for shillings. Assuming that at the point of departure the silver currency of France amounted to 2½ milliards, (£ 100,000,000), this beautiful operation would cost her a very considerable amount, a sum so much the nearer to 1,250 millions (£ 50,000,000) in proportion as the abstraction of her silver had been more rapidly effected; and down to the commencement of 1858, the silver was flowing out of France at a very great speed. It would be more than the above large sum, if the depreciation of gold were upwards of one half, or if, being one half only, the silver currency of France had been at the point of departure upwards of 2½ milliards (£ 100,000,000).

The sum of 1,250 millions (£ 50,000,000) is too large to be lightly sacrificed, and yet it is not the loss which seems to me the most to merit our attention. The great danger and the great evil are the anxieties, the uncertainty, and, finally, the injuries which will fall upon a multitude of interests calling for our consideration by their mass, and for our respect by the justice of their case and the sympathy which it excites.