drain of some 4,000,000 a year has gone to India, further
depleting stock in Europe.

"While trade and population constantly grow and demand more
metallic currency, there is a steadily diminishing quantity to
meet it. If you put the present product of gold at L19,000,000 a
year, and the requirements of the arts at 8,000,000 or 10,000,000
a year, while the India demand is 4,000,000, there is only left
5,000,000 to 7,000,000 a year for Europe, America, and the British
Colonies.

"It will seem to subsequent ages the height of folly that just at
this period, when gold was running short, the chief states of the
world decided to close their mints against silver, and cut off, so
to speak, one-half the money supply of the world from performing
its proper functions.

"Had the world continued to use both metals as freely as before,
the painful crisis we have passed through would have been much
mitigated. But by a suicidal policy silver was cut off at the very
time it was most needed, and a double burden thrown upon gold just
when it was able to bear only half of its former burden.

"As Bismarck has well said, two men were struggling to lie under a
blanket only big enough for one."

Bad as have been the effects of monometallism in England, they have been
far worse in Ireland; and dark as is the future of the former, it is light
itself compared with that evidently in store for the latter. Those
familiar with Irish affairs know that after a long agitation several acts
have been passed to enlarge the rights of tenants and to secure them a
larger share of what they produce. The Act of 1881 reduced the rents and
fixed the amount to be paid at a specific annual sum in money for a long
term of years; and the subsequent Ashbourne Act (so called from Lord
Ashbourne, who introduced it) gave tenants a chance to buy and pay for
lands in fixed yearly installments for forty-nine years. The intent was to
create a peasant ownership somewhat like that of France. It was the end of
a long fight, and was supposed to be a great victory and the inauguration
of a very great reform.

Scarcely, however, was the great victory won and the great reform
inaugurated when it became evident that, owing to the demonetization of
silver and increased purchasing power of gold, the tenants were, in
reality, bound to much heavier payments than before. Whatever may have
been the inte