Page:Forgotten Man and Other Essays.djvu/207

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CIRCULATION OF GOLD AND SILVER
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this. The burden of proof lies upon those who bring forward attempts to solve the problem, and I can justly be held only to examine and refute such attempts. No proof has ever been offered by any of the persons in question. No one of them has attempted as much of an analysis of the effect of artificial expedients on value as the one I have just offered. No one of them has attempted to analyze the operation of the proposed coinage union, to show how or why they expect it to act as they say. They pass over this assumption as lightly as our popular advocates of silver assume that re-monetization would put an end to the hard times. They content themselves with analogies, or with loose and general guesses that such and such things would result from a coinage union. We all know what dangers lurk in the argument from analogy. The further you follow it the further you are from the point. An analogy has no proper use save to set in clearer light an opinion or a proposition which must rest for its merits on an appropriate demonstration. Thus the attempt has been made to illustrate the power of governments to control the fluctuations of the metals by the analogy of a man driving two horses. It is said that this is "controlling natural forces for definite results," and it is asked, "if one man in his sphere can do this, why may not the collective might of the nation do this in its sphere?" My answer is that it is in the sphere of man to tame horses, but it is not in the sphere of nations to control value, and therefore the analogy is radically false. I cannot be held to argue both sides of the question. I am not bound to put all the cases of the adversaries into proper shape for discussion and then to refute them. I plant myself squarely upon the fundamental principles of the science of which I am a student and deny that any concurrent circulation is possible except under temporary and accidental circumstances, because it involves the proposition that legislation can control