The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1896-10-09
SILYER'S STORY
TOLD IN FOUR CHAPTERS-LlGHT
AND SHADOWS OF THE AGES.

AMI OT1AOOWo Of l f7G. A1eS. X
The Night of the Middle Ages and the
Dawn of the Renaissance-The First
Rift of Light Came with the Inflow of
Silver-Unsafe to Tamper with Natures
Iaws-Fixing of the Ratio.
During that singular period commonly
called the Dark Ages the light Of cvili-
zation became almost entirely extin-
guished, and when we consider the
heights to which enlightenment attained
in Rome under the CAESARS, whose mag
niticent mastery Of the mechanic and fine
arts found expression in the noblest tem-
piles ever erected by human hands; whose
law codes have been the patterns for the
government OF the most advanced Of the
modern nations; whose schools Of phi
iosophy solved some Of the deepest prob
lens Of nature. and whose poetry and lit
erature in general have been the models
OF the ages, we can but wonder that man
kind with such mighty heritage should
have sunk so low throughout Christen-
dom Tor six or seven centuries that it is a
fact, that but for the Arabians, a Moslem
race. who preserved the arts and sciences
Of the ancient world, the
m. Lessons of Greece and Rome
would have been lost to us. Some
mighty force must have been at work to
cast such an eclipse over the intelligence
of the Saxon race for SO long neriod OF
time. What could it have been ? 1t was
the dearth Of money, the lifeblood of com
merce, the want Of which arrested inter
change Of commodities between the scat
tered nations, and so confined men to
themselves, compelling them to imper-
fectly supply their own wants and cutting
off the broadening and satisfying intlu
ences Of reciprocal intercourse. There
was no growth but, on the contrary, a
suspension of the racial forces which can
only expand by interdependence and in
terchange. The
First Rift of Light
followed the crusades, which opened
pathway to the wealth of the Orient,
while to some extent the credit system,
lnaugurated at Venice and Genoa in It'll,
brought on revival through the intro
duction of exchanges in the form of
paper.
No truth is more firmly established
than that the eclipse of the Dark Ages
+b cf ,,+I,,
proof lies in the wondrous awakening
which came with the Spanish conquests
in the New World and the pouring into
the lap of benighted Europe of the reju-
venatng floods from the silver mines of
Potosi. Singular, isn't it, that the twi-
light of the Middle Ages began with the
decentralization of silver by Rome in 221
A. D.; that its full midnight was upon
the world when nearly all the
Actual Money Had Disappeared;
that the first dawn Of the Renaissance
should have come with the crusades,
which opened a way to the treasury of
the East, and that the full day should
have burst forth in its broadest splendor
when the retrieving flow Of the white
metal found its benifcent way from the
long-sealed vaults of the mysterious
lands Of the Incas and the Montezumas
into the empty veins of perishing com
merce in the Old World.
Does not this imperfect outline of
events that have actually passed teach
lesson of ofhighest significance to the world
today? Is it not reasonable to suppose
that what has been may be again? Mod
ifications may come, it is true, with new
and reformed conditions, but there are
psychical laws which are as immovable
as the procession of the equinoxes and
cannot be defied. What good purpose
has been served by the ruthless destruc-
tion of one-half Of the worlds money as
represented by silver, which, as we have
seen, has through the ages come down
side by side with gold in the service it
has given to man since Abraham pur-
chased
The Cave of NIachpelah
wherein to lay the dust of Sarah? Dis
credited but once by the effeminated syb-
arites Of decaying Rome we have seen
how the act contributed to bring upon the |
world it's deepest chapter of gloom and
how its restored use brought back to
fainting civilization the pulse-beats of
1,oo1+h opd oronad tho waV tn the GRAND