ld be withdrawn from
the channels of trade, it would not be difficult to see that prices
would fall; would, in fact, be completely annihilated. There would be
no money with which to make purchases or to pay debts, civilization
would go backwards, and universal bankruptcy and ruin would ensue.
Suppose that only one-half or one-third of the money available for use
should be withdrawn from circulation; even then business would be
paralyzed, the money remaining would be hoarded or would be collected
in the great money centres, prices would fall, and business men all
over the country would be forced into bankruptcy. I think that it must
be perfectly apparent that a contraction of credit does not act on the
general level of prices in the same manner and to the same extent that
a contraction of the volume of money does; that, in fact, it does not
act on the general level of prices at all.

I, therefore, conclude that money, and money only, acts on the general
level of prices, and that credit does not and cannot act on prices
except only as it may increase the rapidity of the circulation of
money; and even then it is the greater efficiency of the money, and
not the credit, that stimulates prices. Credit may temporarily
stimulate the price of the product of some particular industry, but to
do this it must attract money from some other industry, and the
stimulation will be at the expense of a corresponding depression in
prices in the industry from which the money is attracted.

LOS ANGELES, COL.

POINTS IN THE AMERICAN AND FRENCH CONSTITUTIONS COMPARED.

BY NIELS GROeN.

There are several reasons why, particularly in the light of what is
going on in the two countries, a comparison between certain points of
the constitutions of the French and United States republics should be
of more than passing interest. Successive ministerial crises in France
threaten the stability of the republic; here, while political
conventions representing millions of people meet and produce radical
platforms, nobody is apprehensive of revolution or trouble. The
constitution is a bulwark against sudden change; its wisdom is
believed to be guarded by impregnable security against caprice or
panic.

One in the Eastern hemisphere, the other in the New World, the two
countries are the only great republics; both are watched by monarchies
with invidious eyes, and, as before suggested, both have passed
through, or are passing through, interesting n