present position of the two metals in the public mind.

Of the many singular features in the present overheated controversy,
probably the most singular is the fact that comparatively few bimetallists
know of, or, at any rate, say much about, this demonetization of gold,
while the monometallists ignore it entirely, and many of them, who ought
to know better, absolutely deny it.

So extensive was this demonetization of gold, and so far-reaching were its
consequences, that it may easily be believed that it was the beginning of
all our misfortunes, and that the crime of the century, instead of being
the demonetization of silver in 1873, was really the demonetization of
gold in 1857; for that was the first general or preconcerted international
action to destroy the monetary functions of one of the metals and throw
the burden upon the other, and it first familiarized the minds of
financiers, and especially of the creditor classes, with the fact that the
thing might easily be done and that it would work enormously to their
advantage.

It may also be said that it led logically to the action of 1867, which was
but the beginning of a general demonetization of silver.

The history of gold demonetization is full of instruction and is here
given in detail.

In 1840-45 the world was hungering for gold. All the leading nations had
just passed through financial convulsions which shook the very foundations
of society. Several American states had either repudiated their debts
outright or scaled them in ways that to the English mind looked dishonest,
and there was a general uneasiness among the creditor classes of the