The times. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1890-1903, 1892-09-15
POPULAR HALLUcrNATroNs.

L
gyou NAV fool some of the people all tie
| time and ali of the people some Oh tue
time. but you cannot fool all OF the pe'-
r,o oil tho time" We believe this TO be,
n tho main. true. but it is most surpris-
ING 70 soc how long large bodies OF the
roorIo will often remain under delusions
which are as plainly deluslons as any,
thing can be. in spite Of instructions ana
demonstrations to the contrary.
oro Of the most remarkable instances
of this recorded in history, is the de-
Ius;on under which all the people oil
Great Britain rested from 1792 to lol"
:, rosnoct 70 the power of compound IN
torost 70 produce money for the SINK
ing Fund with which the Natiohal Deo'
might be extinguished.
In the latter part of the last century a
certain DR.. Price put out an essay upon
comnound interest. In it he said;
eft &c well known to what prodiglous
erms money improved for some time at
compound interest will increase penny
80 improved from our Saviour birtn
as to double itself every fourteen years.
or which is nearly the same thing put
ont TO FIVE per cent. compound interest
ot orr Sayiour's birth. would by this time
have increased 10 more money IMAM
would be contained In 150.OOO,OOO or
globes, each equal 30 the earth In magni-
tude, and all of solid gold.
1t is true that a friend Of DR.. Price,
Mr.. Morgan. calculating the sum with
more accuracy, demonstrated that the
number of globes of solid gold produced
would only be 1O7, each globe as large
as the earth. snd all IF solid gold, but
q matter of AZ such globes was con-
sidcred a mere triAe not TO be allowed any
place in the dis ussion. On account OF
the herculean wars with France the
English national debt was assuming
about that time enormous and alarming
proportions, and it was argued that the
way to pay it off was by Sinking Fund
10 which DR.. Prices doctrines concern
ing compound interest should be applied,
the nations own obligations TO be bought
ND hy it's Sinking Fund Commissioners
10 whom interest on that debt would ne
paid and this interest and a new con
tribution to he invested in new obllga-
tons and 50 on. and that very practical
statesman William Pitt was so taken by
his theories that he actually adopted
them as .hc policy of his government and
induced Parliament TO adopt them as
the national plan of finance. OF course
the radical error in the scheme was the
hypothesis that something could be pro-
duced out of nothing. That a juggle of
figures called compound interest, could
add to fund which was not contributed
to by new money raised by taxation or
by borrowing. But Notwithstanding
this palpable error, the English people
adopted Dr. Prices theory of compound
interest as the national plan of finance
and lived and worked under it in the
fond delusion that it was accomplishing
something real towards paying off their
| debt for nearly a quarter of q century.
In 1913 DR.. Robert Hamilton, of Aber-
deem, Scotland, published a very search
| ing examination into the Sinking Fund,
and he demonstrated automatically
that the people were living and acting
under a juggle and deluson; that COM
pound interest could. of itself, produce
nothing; that the only fund with which
debt could be reduced was surplus reve-
nue, and that if the public obligations
that had been bought for the Sinking
Fund had been destroyed as soon as
bought, the result would have been ex-
actly the same as paving interest on
them TO be reinvested. Though this was
automatically just as certain at the be-
ginning as it was in 1913, yet the Eng
lish people lived for twenty years under
the delusiOn that 1t was not so.
The delusOns under which many Amer
leans are to-day resting concerning silver
is no less remarkable than the decisions
of the English people concerning the pO-
tency of compound interest. and it is of
the same Character-412 ID grains of
silver are worth at the jewelers. thirty
cents less than % $40 grains of gold;
yet the deluded Americans believe that
the Government can make the Az II
grains of silver as valuable as the % $40
grams OF SOlO Dy stamping vi Inc Sil'Vl
that it is a dollar. The thing can, of
course. be no mere done than compound
interest can add to a fund when the
money is not provided for it, but when
this is pointed out to the deluded Aneri-
can. lie asks you to explain why it is
| that the silver dollar to-day exchanges
upon equal terms with the gold dollar.
We will tell the deluded American why
| this is so.
The Government receives the silver dol
| lar in payment of all debts to it, and it
exchanges gold dollars for silver dollars
whenever it is asked to do So So long
as it does this, the silver dollar will, Of
course, be on the same footing with the
gold dollar, and it can always do this
until the silver dollars become too numer-
GUS. But if all the silver is coined into
| dollars and then become so numerous
that the Governments Treasury gets ex-
| clusively stocked with them, then the
| Government will have to pay its credi-
tors 10 take silver dollars from it.. and the
moment it does this, it win have dis
eliminated against silver. and the instant
it does that, other people will do the
same,and silver must at once, of course,
lose its place as money and take its place
| aa O commodity or IN state il differently