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Show . UU EFFECT OF DEPRECIATION OF GOLD. The position of tho national dobl Is this: At prosent it represents, rouglr-ly, rouglr-ly, 5 per cent of tho capital assets of our community; this proportion of tho whole belongs to the nation's creditors. credi-tors. But If prices suddenly doubled from any causo It Is clear that tho debt would then represent 2 1-2 per cent of the assets of tho country, and tho proprietors of tho consolidate debt would, although stUI mortgagee! for the same number of sovereigns as before, ho Just CO por cent worse off. And It Is this silent, ond as yet only half recognized, financial revolution revo-lution which Is really at this time going go-ing on around us. Prices have advanced ad-vanced nearly 30 per cent since 1S9H and this prodigious "depreciation of gold," as the professor terms it, ha3 JuBt as really reduced tho burden of the national debt as though with I prjecs stable wo have paid off two hundred millions sterling. And that Is why Jevons described the rise of prices In the 'GOs as a violation of the national debt. That debt represents repre-sents a portion of the wealth and the products' of the community. The steelmaker steel-maker pays his proportion of tho Interest In-terest charges and tho sinking fund by tho sale of his steel, tho farmer by the salo of his wheat and wool. If steel and wheat, and wool have advanced ad-vanced 80 per cent since 189G then tho taxpayers are relieved to that extent, ex-tent, while tho creditor who Is being paid In a depreciated 'currency is impoverished. im-poverished. in the caBo of grent debtor communities, com-munities, I am thinking of tho Amorl- u;iu ana uauuuiun prairie suites, ui tho new proprietary body in "Ireland who pay their fixed installments by selling produce for sovereigns; of that prodigiously Indebted community, communi-ty, Australasia; In all these cases the 'relief afforded by the advance of prices Is to them as tb? dawning of a new day Australasia s external public and private loans loans raised chiefly In England aro at least five hundred millions sterling, and I think I am not far wrong in estimating that tho advanco slnco 1S9G In the price of ono single export, namely wool, liquidates the whole obligation of her annual Interest on this vnst sum. In othor words, the rise In the prico of v.-ool has In fifteen years emancipated emancipat-ed Australasia from debt So recently as 187-1 the world'6 production pro-duction of gold was onlv $lS.000,00O, almost the -whole of which Soetbcer showed was consumed in tho arts and manufactures, while for the current year it will bo $100,000,000. How Is it possible that these vast supplies could fall to inflate our currencies and raise our prices" John Stuart Mill says that "an Increase in the quantity of money raises prices and n dimunltlon lowers them, is the most elementary proposition In the theory of currency, and without It we should have no key to any of tho others." Not only arc the world's currency conditions condi-tions today such as to justify and explain tho great rls of prices in gold standard countries, but the conditions of future supply the amazing masses of the yellow metal "in sight" in the mines makes a vast further advanco of prices during the next quarter of a century Inevitable. During nil these years to come It Is quite certain that consols will continue very "unfashionable," "unfash-ionable," and tho greatest caro and consideration in legislation should bo shown, not only to the nation's creditors, cred-itors, but to the ontlro creditor and mortgngee Interests Moretown Frew-en Frew-en in Loudon Post. |