WHEN Parliamentary Reform is the absorbing topic of the day, the absence from the field of so distinguished a Radical as Mr Cobden has naturally excited much remark. His obstinate reticence and seclusion when Mr Bright was touring as an agitator, followed by his abrupt departure to America when the Parliamentary Session was opening, were mysteries which have been variously interpreted. The Brightites, with the usual narrow-mindedness of the sect, could attribute this strange conduct to nothing but jealousy. Mr Cobden, they said, had been the great man in the Corn-law agitation, and he would not now consent to play second to Mr Bright! Others said that Cobden, who, though not gifted with the grand "stump" oratory of Bright, is far more politic and versed in the signs of the time, saw that the new agitation would prove a failure, and therefore desired to keep out of it. For our own part, we were content to accept Mr Cobden's own statement of the matter-namely, that he went to America to look after his private business. But this occasioned a reflection. At the time that Mr Cobden's letter, announcing his intended departure, appeared in the newspapers, his friend Bright was denouncing the nobility and landed gentry because, as a "leisure class," they monopolised the chief places in our governmental system. As if it were not most natural that men who, from their youth, have devoted their attention to public affairs, should be preferred as statesmen to manufacturers, who give their whole time to money-making and their private business! And now, as if to challenge public attention in a most striking manner to this truth, on the eve of a momentous session of Parliament, the most distinguished chief of the Radical party not only refuses to take his part in the Reform agitation,

but, leaving the country to look after itself, takes himself off to America!

and all because it better suits his private business! Yet this Mr Cobden is no penniless patriot, compelled by necessity to neglect his country, but a prosperous manufacturer, who, moreover, has pocketed a larger amount of the people's money in return for a few years' services, than the hardest-working Prime-Minister that a "bloated aristocracy' ever furnished to the State. Nevertheless, in utter disregard of the £70,000 retaining-fee, and as if to burlesque all Mr Bright's aspirations for the overthrow of the aristocracy and their replacement by manufacturers, off went Mr Cobden, leaving the battle of Reform to be fought in his absence, and without even his countenance !

So extraordinary a desertion is unparalleled, and certainly, from a Radical point of view, it admits of no justification. But we can throw more light on the motives of the fugitive. These are deducible from the contents of a work which he has published, and left behind him. It is a species of petard calculated to blow his own party to shivers on the Reform question; and after preparing the last sheets for press, it was only natural that he should make off before the explosion came. The book in question is a translation of M. Chevalier's able work "On the Probable Fall of Gold;"* and we do not exaggerate when we say that the publication of that book is the heaviest knock on the head that could be administered to the present insane demands for a reduction of the franchise. For what is the gist of that book but to show that the fall in the value of money will in a few years become so rapid as entirely to revolutionise our nomenclature of value-so that what is £5 now, will then figure for £10? "It

is estimated by M. Chevalier," says Mr Cobden in his preface, "that the present yield of gold amounts, in ten years, to about as much as the entire production during the 356 years which intervened between the date of the discovery of America by Columbus and the year 1848, when the mines of California were discovered." M. Chevalier is too prudent to fix dogmatically the exact extent of the coming fall in the value of money; but his facts lead to the inference that within ten years that fall will amount to no less than onehalf-and this is the result which he himself seems to regard as most probable. It is time the public was considering the subject. "I wish I could believe," says Mr Cobden, "that this work will be read as widely as, from its great importance, it deserves to be. It is a subject on which the early possession of knowledge and the exercise of forethought will confer great advantages over ignorance and indifference, and afford the only safeguard against probable loss." We shall be content for the present if we can direct to it the attention of the public in such a manner as to hold back the Legislature from perilous innovations on the constitution, seeing that the franchise will soon be lowered to a dangerous extent without any Reform Bill at all.

Upwards of eight years have elapsed since the Magazine directed attention to the very points which M. Chevalier now discusses in detail.* At that time, when the most eminent geological authorities were asserting that the gold-mines would soon be exhausted, the Magazine took an entirely opposite view, and, on grounds identical with those now held by M. Chevalier, maintained that the auriferous area of the new mines was so extensive that they would long continue to be highly productive, and that, in consequence, a great fall would take place in the value of money. The continued productiveness of the mines has already falsified the calculations of those who anticipated their speedy exhaustion; and M. Chevalier sees

every reason to believe that their present productiveness will continue unimpaired for a long time to come. If so, there will be no lack of hands to work them. Taking Australia and California together, the ordinary daily earnings of the miner, says M. Chevalier, is 16s. ; and yet, at the present hour, men will labour at gold-finding (witness the gold-washers of the Rhine) even though they only make 15d. or 20d. a-day! To how low a point, then, must the productiveness of the mines fall before they will cease to be worked! But let us compare the earnings of the miners with even the highest rate of wages which generally prevails in temperate climates, and amongst the most prosperous nations of Europe,—say, five francs 4s. 2d. How wide a margin is still left! "It follows," says M. Chevalier, "that the value of gold might fall till nineteen franes (16s.) should correspond only to the amount of wellbeing which can at present be procured for five francs (4s. 2d.) By this calculation, the fall in the value of money would in the end amount to three-fourths ; — in other words, to procure the same amount of subsistence it would be requisite (other things being equal) to give four times as much gold as at present. According to this, we are very far from the end of the crisis."

Let us briefly exhibit the extraordinary change that has occurred in the supply of the precious metals within the last half-century. At the beginning of the present century the annual addition made to the stock of gold amongst the nations of Christendom was barely £2,500,000. After 1830, when the Ural and Siberian mines began to be developed, the annual supply of gold rose by degrees to £7,000,000,- at which amount it stood in 1848. Now, the annual yield of gold (according to M. Chevalier, who is the highest authority on the subject) amounts to £38,000,000. In other words, the annual supply of gold has increased more than five-fold within the last ten years, and fifteen-fold since the beginning of the century! Already the

new mines of California and Australia, together with the old ones, have during the last eight years added at least £160,000,000 to our stock of gold,-.e., upwards of £100,000,000 more than if the supply had continued as it was in 1848. It is not within the purpose of this article to explain the various causes which hitherto have prevented so great an increase to the world's currency producing a commensurate depreciation. It will suffice to point out the chief of these -namely, the substitution of gold for silver money in France and some other parts of Europe. Within the last eight years about £70,000,000 of silver has been exported to the East,* the vacuum being filled up by the new supplies of gold-money, which can be had cheaper. It is proved by experience that a difference of one per cent in value will cause gold-money to be substituted for silver-money, and vice versa. But the change that has taken place in the relative value of gold and silver, owing to the excessive supply of the former metal, is three times greater than this. "In the French market," says M. Chevalier, "silver is now at a premium. To those who bring them a quantity of coined silver, the bullion-merchants will give a certain sum beyond its legal equivalent in goldmoney. This premium is a notorious fact; it is quoted every day; every morning the newspapers announce it. During the last two years it has

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ranged ordinarily from 20 to 30 francs per 1000. Sometimes it has been lower, but it has also risen to 40 francs,"-equal to 4 per cent. Again he says:- "That the premium on silver should have reached even 4 per cent, under the circumstances in which the trade in the precious metals is placed, seems to me to indicate the force with which gold is tending towards depreciation; and they who argue from the slightness of the premium that there is little ground for anticipating any great future change in the value of gold, seem to me to fall into a remarkable error." Bearing in mind that one per cent of difference is sufficient to cause one of the precious metals to be substituted for the other, it will appear manifest that, if the new gold-supplies had not come into the market in extraordinary abundance, the premium upon silver might never have risen above half its present amount until the whole silver currency of France had been bought up and replaced by gold.+ And since the premium upon silver has risen to about thrice as much as suffices to effect a substitution of one of the precious metals for the other, it is evident that there must be a plethora of gold seeking employment in this way. And when more than enough of gold seeks employment in this way, it is a proof that there is still greater difficulty in employing it in any other way,-that there is no natural

void to be filled up in the currency, and that, as soon as ever this substitution of gold for silver in the currency of France is completed, the produce of the new gold-inines will act with extraordinary force in causing a general repletion in the currency of Christendom, and a corresponding fall in the value of money.

France, to use M. Chevalier's expression, is the "parachute" which has retarded the fall in the value of gold. How long will it be before the action of this parachute be overcome, and gold comes down to its natural level? M. Chevalier states that, in the six years previous to the 1st of January 1858, £45,000,000 of silver had been exported more than was imported, its place being supplied by gold, as shown by the extraordinary amount of gold (£95,000,000) in the same period coined at the Paris Mint. In order to understand how this extraordinary addition to the gold coinage was needed, it must be borne in mind that the positive deficit of £45,000,000 does not represent the entire diminution sustained by France in the amount of her silver currency. On the average of the 35 years between 1816 and 1851, the excess of the imports of silver into France, over the exports, was £3,000,000. Therefore to have kept the currency of France in its normal condition, 18 millions of silver would require to have been added to it during the six years subsequent to 1851; whereas 45 millions were during that period withdrawn from it! Accordingly, the actual diminution sustained by the silver currency of France by the end of 1857 was not £45,000,000, but £63,000. Add say 12 or 14 millions for last year, and then it will be seen that the silver money of France is less by fully seventy-five millions sterling than it would have been had matters continued as they were prior to 1852. Deduct this from the £100,000,000 of gold, the produce of the new mines, and the wonder will almost cease as to where all the gold has gone to. Indeed it appears from a return laid before the Committee on the Bank Acts, that the exports of silver to the East from Great Britain

and the Mediterranean in the six years subsequent to 1851 was £56,670,000, .e. £11,670,000 more than was during the same period exported from France. Here, then, are other 11 millions, making nearly ninety millions in all, to be subtracted from the new gold-supplies: so that, of the extra supply of £100,000,000 produced by the new mines, little more than a tenth part remains unaccounted for, and capable of influencing prices and the general value of money. If, then, this comparatively small extra supply of gold has in any way whatever influenced prices (as it certainly has done in the case of agricultural produce and raw material generally, and also in the rents of farms and houses), what are we to expect in three or four years, when France shall have ceased to act as a parachute, and when the entire produce of the new mines comes to act solely and exclusively in depreciating the value of the currency? According to the estimate of M. Chevalier and other authorities, the whole stock of silver money in France was originally somewhat more than £100,000,000, so that fully one-half of it has already been drained off, and replaced by gold; and although Germany, too, offers a field for the substitution of gold for silver money to some extent, this manner of employing the new gold-supplies will plainly have an end in a very few years. Indeed, every year henceforth, this field for the employment of gold will contract rapidly, till it disappears; so that, even before this vacuum be actually filled, the new gold will come to tell seriously on the general value of

money.

Besides this substitution of gold for silver money, M. Chevalier carefully considers the other outlets that may be expected for the produce of the new gold-mines. He considers what amount of the new supplies is likely to be absorbed by such countries as at present have an insufficient proportion of the precious metals in their currencies; also what increase of gold money may be expected to arise from increase of population and of commerce, from hoarding, shipwrecks,