s its intrinsic value on Lake
Superior?

=Well, if what you say be true, there is no intrinsic value in any of the
precious metals, and we cannot have an invariable standard of value at
all.=

No more than an invariable standard of friendship or love. Value is, in
fact, a purely ideal relation. All this talk about an invariable dollar
which shall be like the bushel measure or the yard stick is the merest
claptrap. The fact that gold men stoop to such language goes far to prove
that their contention is wrong. The argument violates the very first
principle of mental philosophy, in that it applies the fixed relations of
space, weight, and time to the operations of the mind. Would you say a
bushel of discontent or eighteen inches of friendship? Men who compare the
dollar to the pound weight or yard stick are talking just that
unscientifically. Invariable value being an impossibility, and an
invariable standard of value a correlative impossibility, all we can do is
to select those commodities which vary the least and use them as a measure
for other things; but you will not find in any economic writer that any
metal is a fixed standard. And this brings me to consider that singular
piece of folly which furnishes the basis of so much monometallist
literature, namely, that gold is less variable in value than silver, and
that one metal as a basis varies less than two. Some of our statesmen have
got themselves into such a condition of mind on this point as to really
believe that, while all other products of human labor are changing in
value, gold alone is gifted with the great attribute of God--immutability.
It is sheer blasphemy. It is conclusively proved, and by many different
lines of reasoning, that silver is many times more stable in value than
gold.

=I never heard such a proposition in my life! How on earth can it be
proved that silver, as things now stand, has not changed in value more
than gold?=

By the simplest of all processes. If we were in a mining country, I could
easily prove it to you by the observed facts of geology, mineralogy, and
metallurgy; but that is perhaps too remote and scientific, so we will take
the range of prices since silver was demonetized. Of course you have seen
the various tables, such as Soetbeer's and Mulhall's. Take their figures,
or, better still, take those of the United States Statistical Abstract,
and you will find the following facts demonstrated:

In February, 1873, a ten-ounc