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• The Works and Life of Walter Bagehot Volume Vi
• Lombard Street.
• Lombard Street In 1910.
• Prefatory Note to Twelfth Edition.
• Advertisement.
• Chapter I.: Introductory.
• Chapter II.: A General View of Lombard Street.
• Chapter III.: How Lombard Street Came to Exist, and Why It Assumed Its Present Form.
• Chapter IV.: The Position of the Chancellor of the Exchequer In the Money Market.
• Chapter V.: The Mode In Which the Value of Money Is Settled In Lombard Street.
• Chapter VI.: Why Lombard Street Is Often Very Dull, and Sometimes Extremely Excited.
• Chapter VII.: A More Exact Account of the Mode In Which the Bank of England Has Discharged Its Duty of Retaining a Good Bank Reserve, and of Administering It Effectually.
• Chapter VIII.: The Government of the Bank of England.
• Chapter IX.: The Joint Stock Banks.
• Chapter X.: The Private Banks.
• Chapter XI.: The Bill Brokers.
• Chapter XII.: The Principles Which Should Regulate the Amount of the Banking Reserve to Be Kept By the Bank of England.
• Chapter XIII.: Conclusion.
• Appendix.
• Note A.: Liabilities and Cash Reserve of the Chief Banking Systems.
• Note B.: Extract From Evidence Given By Mr. Alderman Salomons Before House of Commons Select Committee In 1858.
• Note D.: Meeting of the Proprietors of the Bank of England. 13th September, 1866.
• The Metaphysical Basis of Toleration. (1874.)
• Monsieur Guizot (1874.)
• Professor Cairnes. (1875.)
• The Public Worship Regulation Bill. 1 (1874.)
• The Depreciation of Silver.
• Preface.
• I.: The Low Value of Silver, and Its Effect On India.
• II.: The Remedies For the Fall In Silver.
• III.: Further Suggestions On the Fall In Silver.
• IV.: The Effects of the Resumption of Specie Payments In France On the Price of Silver.
• V.: The Effect of a Depreciation of Silver On Our Foreign, and Especially On Our Eastern Trade.
• VI.: The Extreme Fall In Silver, and the Hasty Remedies Proposed.
• VII.: The Report of the Committee On the Depreciation of Silver.
• VIII.: The Proposal of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce to Suspend the Coinage of Silver In India.
• IX.: The Debate On the Indian Budget.
• X.: The Different Effect On Trade of a Cheapening of the Precious Metals, and of a Depreciation of Inconvertible Paper.
• XI.: The American Commission On the Currency.
• XII.: The Permanent Effect of an Increase of “council Bills” On the Flow of Silver to India and Upon the Indian Exchanges.
• XIII.: The Effect of the “council Bills” On the Indian Exchanges.
• XIV.: The Minute of the Indian Government On the Depreciation of Silver.
• XV.: A Proposed Remedy For the Depreciation of the Silver Coinage of India.
• XVI.: The Transition State of the Silver Market.
• XVII.: Bi-metallism.
• Appendix. Evidence Before the Select Committee On Depreciation of Silver. Monday, 8th May, 1876.

X.

THE DIFFERENT EFFECT ON TRADE OF A CHEAPENING OF THE PRECIOUS METALS, AND OF A DEPRECIATION OF INCONVERTIBLE PAPER.

We showed last week that neither the depreciation of an inconvertible paper, nor the appreciation of an artificially limited coin, produces as a rule any effect on trade. What an English exporter to America gains on the one hand, in the additional price for his goods, consequent on the depreciation of greenbacks, he loses on the other, by the additional price which he has to pay for gold, or a bill payable in gold, which he requires to bring that price to England. Greenbacks are of no use here, and their depreciation upon an average, though by no means always in every particular case, affects the prices equally of all things. It is a local depreciation, beginning in a particular country, affecting alike all the property and products of that country, but affecting nothing out of it.

But it is necessary to distinguish this most carefully from a depreciation of the precious metals caused by a large new supply. That new supply is a new exportable product, sent from the country of its origin through the world, and thus affects more or less, in proportion to its magnitude, the world’s trade.

Suppose, for simplicity, that silver were the only precious metal in the world—that all nations used it as money, and that none of them used gold in that way at all—the process of depreciation by such new supplies as are expected from Nevada would be this: prices in Nevada and in the rest of the United States would rise; in consequence, imports into the United States would tend to increase, exports from them would tend to decrease, and so an unfavourable “balance of trade,” as the phrase is, being created, silver would be exported; it would be the best way in which America could pay for her imports, and she would so pay for them. On the other hand, the country from which those imports came—suppose it was India—would receive that silver, and in proportion as it received more and more, its prices would be more and more raised. What happened, in consequence of the new silver, in the country of its origin, will again happen in the country of its first receipt. Imports into that country will be stimulated, exports from it checked, an unfavourable balance of trade created, and silver will be sent to the countries which it has to pay. Then, in their turn, these countries—the countries of second receipt, as we may call them—will undergo all the same changes. The depreciation of a depreciated paper is a stationary depreciation, fixed in the country which makes the paper; but that of a precious metal is a travelling depreciation, which passes slowly over the civilised world, altering trade everywhere, creating a new article of export, first from one country and then another, and in consequence, generating a new trade of export to pay for it in the country which receives it.

The modus operandi of this process is much affected in the usual state of the world by there being two precious metals used as money—gold and silver—and also by gold being in many ways the principal of the two; but though the detail is changed, the principle is the same. In a country which uses gold only as a standard currency, silver is a commodity having its price only in gold, just as silk or cotton; that price goes up and down in the same way, and is quoted in the same way. And London is the principal centre of the wholesale commerce, and especially of the new wholesale commerce, of the world. We buy more readily than any other nation, for we have much more money than any other of equal enterprise; and, therefore, all great business requiring new capital on a sudden comes here. Accordingly the new silver for the most part goes not straight to India and the East, where it is a money, but to England, where it is a common article, and we send it over the world and to the nations where it is a money. But this is only a change in the route of the depreciation. It interposes a sort of house of call, it does not change the essence of the matter.

No doubt the first effect has been to advertise and make far more obvious than it would otherwise have been the depreciation of silver. If silver had been our money, as gold is, we should scarcely have been as yet conscious of its being depreciated. A few millions more silver (from Germany or elsewhere) would have gone into the Bank, would have eased the money market, and have tended to raise prices. And we should have had to pay for that silver, just as we pay for the gold which does come. But this process would have been very gradual—probably, as yet, nearly unfelt. The ready demand for silver as a currency in England would have much maintained its value here. You could not have depreciated it much without increasing its quantity—both the quantity in the Bank and the quantity in out-of-door circulation—very largely. But as silver is not a money (except as a token), not a money regulating prices, not a money which more and more is wanted as the value falls more and more, there has been no new English demand of equal or comparable size. Some more silver may, in consequence of the cheapness, have been taken for the arts, but this is all. The actual supply from Germany and the apprehended supply from America have come to a market which other circumstances have made bare of demand. They generated no new demand, and in consequence there is a great fall in the value of silver in England. The travelling depreciation has come here, and has been intensified, as has been shown.

This sudden fall in the value of silver in England has caused a corresponding alteration in the exchange with the countries whose money is silver. As is well known, between two countries which use the same metal for money, there is a natural and fixed par of exchange. A certain weight of that metal of a certain fineness, in the currency of one of these countries, will always exchange for an equal weight of like quality in the currency of the other. But between two countries, one which employs gold and the other silver, there is no such natural par. The relation between the two currencies depends on the amount of the one metal which will exchange for a given amount of the other. When, as now, that amount much varies in England, there is an immediate change in the relation of the English gold currency to foreign silver currencies, because the amount of gold which it would take here to buy any given amount of silver, to export it and coin it into those silver currencies, varies.

And this is the process by which the depreciation travels on another step. Silver being cheaper here, more of it will be bought and sent to the countries where silver is money. But its value there against commodities will not fall as suddenly as it has here. We see that it would not, if silver had been the only metal used as money in the world. And the countries where it is used are, within their own boundaries, in the same position. The more silver falls in purchasing power, the more of it will be wanted to purchase commodities, and the demand for it, therefore, will increase incessantly where the supply is augmented. The silver prices of commodities will be slowly raised everywhere where silver is money, and a great deal of it will be required in the process, and the course of trade will be changed. The silver countries must find exports to pay for this new article, silver, which is coming in upon them.

We must, therefore, carefully distinguish two things which are often confounded in discussing this subject. First, we must see that a depreciation of a metal used as money, whether silver or gold, is utterly different in its effects from those of a depreciation of a currency of paper, for it creates an international trade, and that of paper a local one only.

Secondly, we must see that the depreciation of silver in London, where it is only a commodity, is a wholly different thing from its depreciation in countries where it is a money. The first, as we have seen, is very rapid, but the second is very slow indeed. And the second will counteract the effect of the first, as it is now daily doing, and will tend to raise the value of silver in London—in the entrepôt—where the market is so sensitive, by distributing it over vast regions where much more will be wanted if the value falls comparatively but a little.

Thirdly, we must observe that this process is not at all bad for the trade of England. No doubt the fall in the rate of exchange is a disadvantage to shippers to the countries where money is silver. But then another class of exporters will be benefited, for we import that silver, and have to pay for it. The loss, on the other hand, will be counterbalanced by a gain on the other.