The daily gazette., 1878-02-08
whAs Hfeeaessse On. s1sefx q
IN the Baltimore American.


our greenbacks, but our specie-the sill
yer and gold, ..hard TO get and harder to \
hold'? We know, alas ! well enough
what becomes of 1t In, one sense--that
the chief end of all coin that Is properly
the functions Of its existence, Is
paying bills that II Is easier far to make
u than invest IL safely ; that "enough
being little more than man has, Tit
takes an Irishman to have enough Of 1t !;
that In these days, we had rather trust
our railroads with our lives than with our
money, and some of us suspect that not a
little Of what we have saved for, and
toiled fol, expended health and happiness
for, and acquired by all manner OF self
sacrifices, has found Its way into the
pockets of spectators, there actually to
injure the honest course of legitimate
commerce, and having worn us out in its
getting and cursed us In its loss, IL going
on to curse somebody else by the same
operation. Voltaire has said, at is more
easy to write about. money than to have
IT.; and those who have it laugh at those
who can only write about it," Notwith-
standing this, we come back to our sub
ject "What has become of gold and
silver money? For the money of which
we mean to speak has been in use since
Abraham weighed silver to Ephron in
the field of Macpelah--the earliest known
money being coeval with the earliest
known grave. Economists talk to us
superbly,' says a writer on this subject,
about circulation about the laws that
regulate the movements of the precious
metals, about demand and supply so
that in our confiding trustfulness we i'm
mediately suppose that, according to their
statements, money keeps on running rest
lessly about, like the Wandering jew, or
a white mouse in a revolving cage, and
having thus induced us innocently to be-
leve that money leads life like that of
water, perpetually moving, perpetually
varying, perpetually modifying and re-
constituting It's shape, but never disap-
pearing, they turn round and tell us with
appalling figures and the stateIiest proofs
that money Is constantly abandoning all
shapes whatever, and the, truest Of all
facts concerning it is that 1t goes out of
sight and comes back no more.n- nN7 xbsi
H. We allremember the boards we read
of in our school booksAthe treasures of
,CrGsns, Darius, Solomon, Cyrus, Sesos-
iris and Sennacherib, Where are those
treasures now? BY what process. can
the precious metals of which they were
|composed have disappeared ? A recent
Il pssian writer has inade elaborate caIcu-
whole world owned from Noah down to
cHristopher Columbus, and places that
amount atliine Thousand millions of dol
lars go, ,0O0, ,000, ,000,) or,if you please to
take the other mode Of enumerafion,
nine billions Of dollars. ! This mikftlapl
pear purely fanciful had not q monetary
congress eld ip Brusse selsin1873pnblishAd Is
Off cial calculations, by (which itjclaimA
to have established that since the discov-
cry ofo,Ir own continent the world has
acquired nearly. twice as much actual
A..lt . 4 f.s.fs z
900. In other words, the worlds wealth
from Noah to Mr.. Bland has been ,S25,.
000, ,O00, 900. According TO the Brussels
calculation, the entire stock of gold and
silver five years ago, in Europe, America,
and Australia was $40 ,000, 900 900. OF this
81, ,250, 600, 900 was supposed to exist In
coin and to in active circulation (and
ON this part Of. their subject economists
seemed TO be pretty much all of the same
mind), 5000 100000 was, supposed to
represent the plate and ornaments of civ
ilized society, while 81 200, 100000 was
boarded scattered, or unaccounted for
lost, in fact, to the assets in Christendom
In other words, two sixths Of the Western
| Worlds share of the precious metals are
IN active circulation AZ money, oLe-hali
| is held rs plate and ornaments and one
sixth is hidden away. The actual loss or
| gold and silver by friction, accidents and
shipwreck in Christian lands is calcu
lated Mt one and a-half per cent, while
the loss on, the boarded treasure is SCI
down at rs much more, mailing total o.
about ninety millions of dollars wortf
of annual waste and loss upon our pre-
cious metals. The annual production o.
gold and silver is, however worth abou
500, 900, 900, SO that the. supply is ever,
year increased and the loss more thar
supplied. There then remains to be ac
counted for, besides the wealth of Chris
tian countries, the fifteen billions wortl
| (or fifteen thousand millions worth) o.
gold or silver not assigned to Christen
dom. .Ash.Y
A vast proportion of these millions are
undoubtedly in Asia. and thi.her, we art
Informed our new trade dollars are Il
find their way. Enormous quantities o
gold and silver are employed in the Eas
| in personal ornaments and trinkets, bu
the actual burial of silver is carried on 81
actively that in six years only (from 1885
to 1851 $500, ,O00, 900 worth of silver wa
buried (as McCulloh, the great writer oI
political economy, tells us) in HinddstaI
alone. From the days of the Ph9nician
1 to the dawn of som trade dollar the ex
portation of the precious metals from thu
West to the East has been steadily goinl
on, and it is accepted on all hands sstha
the sums successively inferred there ar
altogether beyond Measurement, and tina
1.-THE richest metallic deposits upon eartl
are sprinkled over Eastern Asia in for
gotten hiding places"
/ For 5000 years the commerce of tn
lworld was carried on without coine,
lmoney. There was none in tho Homeri
ages, and among all the treasures Dl
Schleimann is disinterring at Mycena h
will find no money. But weighing an
Testing silver, as was done in the transac
Ition between Abraham and the sons o
Heth, became so inconvenient that
was great step in the worlds progres
when about 700 years before the Chris
tian era certain king of Argos invente
small change and stamped a tortoise O.
his coins. The act of coming confers n
value ON the metal coined, as the signi
ture on bank note gives to piece 9
paper. 1t is simply Government
| guarantee that the piece of coin whic
bears its impress is actually worth as muc
| as it claims TO be. The real value of piec
of money results exclusively from tn
| quantity of pure metal employed In II
and when Governments in past time
found 1t handy to debase their coinage
! the act Of coming was simply a deception
Gold money was first coined in Englan
under Henry VIII. 1927. 1t is only G
late years that it has become the officia
standard of value in the United States 0
! England. From the discovery OF Americ