d all attempts to reconcile them. In the face of monetary
principles whose nature has been understood for more than two thousand
years, and of historic and economic facts which every college freshman
knows, Mr. Carlisle has the appalling audacity to use the following
language: "Natural causes have separated the two metals, and while it
is possible that natural causes may hereafter change their present
relations to each other, it is certain that these relations cannot be
changed by artificial means."

It is difficult to speak with becoming moderation of such stuff as
this; and it is really pathetic to see the dominant opinion of whole
sections of the country taking its cue from men who assume superior
airs and rebuke the presumption of thinking on the part of some
millions of Americans, while they peddle such insufferable nonsense as
this just quoted from Mr. Carlisle. "Natural causes" indeed, when we
can turn to the statute books of half the world and put our fingers on
the "artificial means" whereby the hoarders of gold have legislated
demand into one metal and legislated it out of the other. Let once a
wrong be achieved by artificial means, and instantly those who profit
by it represent it as the inevitable decree of evolutional forces.
"Natural causes," we are asked to believe, have made gold dear and
silver cheap during a period when the cost of producing gold has been
cheapened more than any other mechanical process; when both metals
have continued on substantially their old relative planes of use in
every respect save as money; when their relative production has been
from three to twenty times less disproportionate than at any other
similar period in the past four hundred years; and when in actual
weight the stocks of coin and bullion available for coinage have risen
from a proportion of thirty-two of silver to one of gold up to that of
sixteen of silver to one of gold coincidently with a fall of the
so-called market ratio from fifteen and one-half to one, when the
mints were open to both, down to thirty-three to one when only the one
can be freely coined. It is simply an incredible and impossible
proposition.

Intrinsic value is as unthinkable as intrinsic distance. Both distance
and value are relations. Neither can exist or be stated except by
comparison. The value of a thing is what it is worth; and it is worth
what it will bring. Value in exchange is the only value that political
economy knows anything about