be found out, a professional economist has nothing to teach, and he might better try to find some useful occupation. If that notion is true, we have no ground on which to criticize the Congressmen who are trying to pass the silver bill. We cannot predict any consequences or draw any inferences from past experience. If legislation can control value for definite results, then the whole matter is purely empirical. In that case, the Congressional experiment may turn out well for all the grounds we have to assert the contrary; its success would only be questionable, not impossible; if it failed it would not be because its supporters had attempted the impossible, but because they had not used sufficient means. They could go on to try the experiment again and again in other forms and with other means, and they would indeed be doing right to proceed with their experiments, like the old alchemists, in the hope of hitting it at last. No economist would have any ground upon which to step in and define the limits of the possible, or to prescribe the conditions of success, or to set forth the methods which must be pursued — if he could not appeal with confidence to the laws of his science as something to which legislature as well as individuals must bend. Therefore one who holds the views I have expressed in regard to economic forces, laws, and phenomena is compelled, as well by his faith in his science as by the public interests now at stake in the question, to maintain that a concurrent circulation of gold and silver, either with or without a coinage union, is impossible.
