The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-12-10 00:00:00

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" In the present state of things it is a matter of abso.
lute necessity to hare only one legal tender. If a twelve-
month ago a standard napoleon was worth twenty standard
francs, it will now be worth no more than 19 francs and
40 centimes, that being the actual depreciation of gold
compared with silver, or, as some would rather put it, the
appreciation of silver compared with gold. Even if the
present comparative values should continue, French five-
franc pieces will probably be exported to Germany, and
even to America; but should the demand for silver
increase, it will be found impossible to sustain the nominal
value of the gold twenty-franc piece in the French cur-
rency. In fact, the public will make the change by.
universally tendering the depreciated metal in payment of
taxes and other debts. It becomes, then, a cinestion
which metal shall give way to the other. In France
there is hardly a question. The franc is part of the
nation, and the gold currency has never been considerable.
Perhaps, too, it is the interest of the government to keep
up the currency, its revenue being three times the interest
of its debt. Were silver to be made the only legal tender,
'it amount of the revenue anol of the debt,
'at. in t he value of silver would be a virtual
lvernment."

£1,000,000 a yeaiic;iileg:

We, in this country, are situated at the present
moment as it is proposed that France should be ;
that is, that we have virtually only one legal tender.
We have adopted, however, the metal, gold, which
is in a course of depreciation, as our legal tender,
and have measured it in the auxiliary metal, silver,
for which, it is obvious, that we shall never be per-
mitted to exchange it with foreign countries. We
shall, in fact, as depreciation goes on, have to pay
more gold for our grain and other imports, for du-
ties, charges, &c., than we are now doing, whilst
all existing money contracts, amongst ourselves and
with the State, we shall have a right to discharge
in a metal of diminished value. One natural result
of our retention of gold as our standard would be
here, as the Times very justly states, would be the
case in France. that, "it would soon be necessary
to raise the nominal rates oftaxes." He proceeds
" It is imt

ible, however, to retain the double lender,
and there can be no doubt that the silver will remain.
Whether there will still remain a gold coinage, and what
place it will occupy in the circulation, it is not easy to say.
In this country it is usual to say that the sovereign is the
only true coin, and that shillings and pence are only
tokens. Ours, however, will soon be the only nation in
the world in which gold is the legal tender; and, per-
haps, the only nation with a gold currency."

In a further passage of his article, the Times
gives up the whole principle contended for by the
buliionists, and virtually adopts the views of the
currency reformers, who contend for a symbolic
money fixed in value by the pound of taxation.
He says, after noticing the increased demand for
silver, by its adoption as the sole legal tender of
the mercantile countries of the world :

During in from Cali

,orma, wnarever Increases the demand for silver must ag-
gravate the difficulty of combining a gold and silver coin-
age on any conditions whatever, except that of making
the silver coin a mere token. Even in this country the
mint can no longer afford to issue shillings at their former
weight of metal. As the objections to a gold coinage in-
crease, and as it becomes excluded from other countries,
the metal must become cheaper and cheaper, and it is
difficult to see how it shall not be eventually depreciated,
not only as compared with silver, but also as interchange-
able with the necessaries and chief comforts of life."
After this admission, we ask of such doctors as
the Economist and the Manchester Guardian their
Of

stion, " What is a pound ?"
course, we may he told that it is 123 grail

what ? Of itself ! But we remind them that it is
Is that the true and I no longer worth any grain weight of the metal,

It will no

commodities. The London Tinteg, of yesterday's
date, contains an article cn the subject which,
coming from so influential a bullionist authority, is
highly important. Our contemporary commences
by quoting a report given in an evening paper that
the French Ministry, looking to the probability of
a depreciation of gold in relation to silver, propose
to abolish the law making gold, equally with silver,
a legal tender; and he proceeds to remark thus
upon the proposition :