nature, although they were not specifically acts for making banknotes legal tender, during the bank suspension at the beginning of this century. It would have been interesting to see what English courts would have made of an act which reversed the whole spirit of English law by diminishing the rights of one party under a contract, and which made the courts an instrument for his oppression instead of an institution to provide a remedy, but no case came up. The twelve judges on appeal overturned the sentence of a man convicted of buying and selling gold at a premium. Some few persons demanded and obtained gold payments throughout the suspension but the paper circulation was really sustained by public opinion and consent, it being believed that the bank suspension was necessary. This form of legal tender, therefore, is totally different from that first described. I call it, for the sake of discrimination, a forced circulation. When a legal tender act giving forced circulation to a depreciated currency is first passed, if it applies to existing contracts it transfers a percentage of all capital engaged in credit operations from the creditor to the debtor. In its subsequent action it subjects either party to the fluctuations which may occur in the forced circulation, robbing first one and then another. Hence the debtor interest is that the depreciation once begun shall go on steadily, because any recovery would rob debtors as creditors were robbed in the first place.
Having disposed of these two points I now take up the question I proposed at the outset: Is a concurrent circulation of gold and silver possible under an international coinage union?
Here we have to make a radical distinction between two different propositions for an international coinage union. The first is that of M. Wolowski. He pointed to the comparatively small fluctuations of the precious metals and to the effect which France had exerted by the double standard,
