republican forms of government (the one set up in 1792, and the second
established in 1848), they were such mere makeshifts and so very
short-lived that they could not have taught the country very much of
the real genius of republican institutions. The centralization and
tyranny of centuries brought revolt and hatred of the past, but did
not prepare the people for self-government; while here the principles
of civil liberty, transplanted from the mother country and flourishing
in congenial conditions under colonial administration, found apt and
natural expression in the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution. The event of republican institutions twice tried in
France failed to show that even the leaders understood the principles
of liberty as they were understood by the fathers of the American
system of government, and enthusiastically adopted by the people, as
the crystallization, so to speak, in definite terms, of what they had
long enjoyed. Short-sighted acts of tyranny, exercised by George III
and his ministers, were regarded, and justly so, as mere accidents of
the time and as innovations to be resisted and overcome. The outcome
was the vindication of the principles of government founded by the
countrymen of King Alfred the Great, their expansion, and the
invaluable expression of those principles in the Declaration and the
Constitution.
Some of the bravest and best under the French monarchy helped to
establish the reign of popular liberty in the United States, and there
can be no question but that the French Revolution was accomplished in
part as a result of what had been seen and done on this side of the
Atlantic on behalf of the civil rights of the people; but the founders
of the first republic in France had no complete foundation on which to
build a fabric firm and lasting. It was not easy for a venerable
European nation, intrenched within its own regal institutions, in
shaking off the past to begin a future of popular sovereignty. Much
was gained by sweeping away the worst abuses of the past, but reaction
came, succeeded, after a long lapse of time, by a second attempt to
establish a republic, again to fail, until the collapse of the power
of the adventurer whose election to the presidency was the beginning
of the end of the republic of 1848, led to the third experiment, the
permanent success of which we all hope for.
If--much virtue in an "if"--the leaders of the first French Republic
had been thoroughly masters of and thoroughly imbued with the
principles of American liberty, it is possible they might have so
instructed and led a bright and capable people as to lay a sure
foundation for the future. But even this modified statement is open to
question. While it may be regretted that the American Constitution was
not copied in the establishment of the successive French republics, it
is by no means certain that this matchless paper would have been so
far appreciated in its recognition of the great principles underlying
it, as to insure success. Some of the South American republics have
the American Constitution, more or less, but are not shining examples
of republican success. No one can question that monarchies like the
United Kingdom and Germany enjoy a larger diffusion of civil liberty
than they.
Taking the French system, however, as it exists to-day, there can be
no question that it would be vastly improved by copying the American
model. It seems to have been founded with a view to the possibility of
restoring the monarchy, and, this being so, the men who created it had
no object in studying the American Constitution with a view to
preventing those ministerial crises which threaten the destruction of
the third republic. It will not do to attribute these crises to the
unstable character of the fiery Frenchman, nor can the difficulty be
disposed of by saying that a French minister will create a crisis for
the sake of a pleasing _bon mot_ or a sprightly paradox. A crisis
supposes something outside of, or above, or beyond the ordinary, but
French ministerial crises have become so common that they are the
laughingstock of the nations, and may be said to be almost the normal
condition of the legislative assemblies of France. So long as such
critical situations can be thus easily brought about there cannot be
that continuity of policy which is essential for carrying out great
projects. The problem to be solved is a constitutional one,--a
statement, I think, easily proved true.
Article Six of the constitution of 1875 reveals the real cause of
ministerial crises in France: "The ministers are in a body responsible
to the Chambers for the general policy of the government, and
individually for their personal acts." This article obviously leaves
the respective powers of both houses very undefined. Which chamber is
the superior? To which of them are the ministers in fact responsible?
The ministers may have a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, and may
be in a minority in the Senate. Then there is a crisis. The Senate
blocks the way and will not allow the government to go on, for it
claims that it is the superior body. This absence of the proper
demarcation of the powers of the Senate, of the Chamber of Deputies,
and of the ministers necessarily leads to conflict; conflict is but a
step from instability, and instability is a crisis which threatens
revolution.
The remedy for these oft-recurring ministerial crises in France is to
be found in the American Constitution. The French Constitution should
be revised and changed at the part quoted and all parts relating to
it, so as to provide against ministerial crises; and the instrument
presenting a sure guide in the performance of this necessary work is
the American Constitution. It has been in operation over a hundred
years and has been found to be an admirable working document,
affording ministerial stability to its cabinets for over a century.
Such a document is surely worthy of the closest study by the public
men of the sister republic. It was inevitable that in so long a time
some amendments should have become necessary; but for a long period it
has undergone no change, save such as noted, and formulating the
results of the civil war. Now and then are heard murmurings which
claim the necessity of a sixteenth amendment, to the effect that the
name of God should be put in the Constitution. The obvious answer to
this is, that in the official life of the United States there is a
more real acknowledgment of the Divine Being than there is in the
official life of any other country, and it is better to have the name
of God impressed upon the hearts of the people than upon even the best
official document ever drawn up.
It would not be correct to say that no attempts have been made to
bring about a ministerial crisis in the United States by encroachment
upon the rights of the Executive. Only once, however, when Andrew
Johnson was President, has the action of the Executive been seriously
hampered. Professor Bryce's remark may be applied to all other
attempts. He writes: "Congress has constantly tried to encroach, both
on the Executive and on the States,--sometimes like a wild bull driven
into a corral, dashing itself against the imprisoning walls of the
Constitution." There is the secret. The "imprisoning walls" of the
American Constitution keep contending powers in their proper places.
The Constitution is so well drawn up that a deadlock is an
impossibility, the equilibrium of concomitant powers is easily
maintained, and the sovereign will of the people has a fair
opportunity of finding a natural exponent.
In the United States the Senate and the House of Representatives are
coördinate bodies; in the French Republic each claims superiority over
the other. In the United States bills are never introduced by the
Cabinet, all bills must originate either in the Senate or in the House
of Representatives; such is not the case in the French Republic. In
the United States the chief duty of the President is to see that the
laws are faithfully executed; the Cabinet administers; its members are
rather the aids or secretaries of the chief magistrate of the nation
than otherwise. They are his advisers and helpers. During the four
years for which the President of the United States is elected, the
limitations of his authority are so remote and theoretical that, for
practical purposes, it may be stated that he always serves out his
full term of office. On the contrary, Presidential resignations are
not unknown in the French Republic. France elects her President for
seven years, yet Thiers, MacMahon, Grévy, Carnot, Casimir-Périer, and
Faure make a list longer than that of the names of the men who have
lived in the White House during the past quarter of a century. In the
United States, the Cabinet lasts as long as the President's term of
office; in the French Republic, the Cabinet sometimes goes to pieces
in four months. Briefly, it is quite clear that in the United States
there can be no ministerial crises, since the President's chief duty
under the Constitution is to see that the laws are faithfully
executed, and the members of his Cabinet do not introduce bills, even
for finance or supplies, but act as his aids. As previously intimated,
the difficulty with the French legislative bodies is that royalistic
precedents and rules run side by side with republican principles, and
the result is a mongrel institution divided, too often, against
itself. When matters shall be so arranged that the French President
will have to fill out his full term of office, and French ministers
will not be permitted to originate legislation, and cabinets shall be
selected to serve as long as the Presidential term, then the French
Republic will enjoy the same ministerial stability as that of the
United States.
It were hard to say that the French method of electing a president is
any better or any worse than that of the United States. The President
of the French Republic is elected by the majority of the votes of both
Chambers. This plan does not seem to remove him further from the
people than does the system of electing a president by electors, as in
the United States. As human ingenuity has not yet succeeded in
creating the ideal republic, wherein, according to Ouida, there would
be no president, some system of election must be followed. The
question is not a burning one. There is notable, however, a growing
tendency in France in favor of electing the president directly by the
votes of the people. The seven-years' period for which the French
president is elected is considered by many to be an excellent
provision; but it loses half its excellence by reason of the fact that
the president has the power to initiate laws, this and other things
concurring to make his resignation a possibility, and not a remote
one.
That the office of vice-president does not exist in France seems to be
of no great consequence. In the history of the American Republic there
have been five vice-presidents who have been called upon to step into
the Presidential chair by the deaths of presidents. According to the
French Constitution, in case of a Presidential vacancy, whether from
death or any other cause, the two Chambers proceed immediately to the
election of a president. In the interval the ministers are invested
with executive power.
What I have written regarding the growing tendency to think it would
be better to elect the president directly by the votes of the people,
applies with a little more force to the election of senators. In
France the municipalities elect the senators, as do State legislatures
in this country. It is held by some who have discussed the question
that it is much more in conformity with the genius of republican
institutions that the people express their will directly by ballot
rather than through the votes of municipal councils, as in France, or
of legislatures, as in the United States. I cannot see that the
difference of terms, that of French senators being nine years, and of
American six, is of practical consequence. While both republics are
at one as to the necessity of a second chamber, providing thus a check
to hasty and unconsidered legislation, many thinkers in both countries
agree that some change is necessary to make it possible for others
than millionaires to be elected senators.
If I were a Frenchman and had the power, I should get every newspaper
throughout the land, and every public man and influential citizen, to
enter upon a crusade for the purpose of impressing upon the minds of
the whole people the following extract from the Constitution of the
United States:
Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
In France, there are constantly continuous and unseemly clashes
between church and state. No matter what complications may exist as
results of the past, surely it would be better for all concerned to
leave the churches to be sustained by the voluntary contributions of
the people. In the United States churches seem to live and thrive
under this system of noninterference by the state in religious
matters, and voluntary support. The more than eighty thousand
clergymen are provided for. In the French Republic one reads
everywhere, on the walls of churches and of schools, the words
"_Liberté, fraternité, égalité_," while there seems to be a serious
disagreement between Clericals, on the one side, and Radicals, on the
other, as to the meaning of these words. To effectually put an end to
this strife, the adoption of the clause I have quoted would be
sufficient.
In writing thus freely of the French Republic I am free, I trust, from
the spirit of the carping critic delighting in comparisons to the
advantage of his own country. I appreciate the splendid literature,
the brilliant art, the advanced civilization of the France of to-day.
I recognize with gratitude the debt which the United States owes the
gallant Gallic people for sympathy and material aid in her struggle
for independence. It is now only necessary to be in France on the
Fourth of July to realize the reality and depth of the friendship
which exists between the sister republics. But I do think that until
France shall copy more closely the Constitution of the United States,
the stability of the third republic cannot be regarded as assured.
HONEST MONEY; OR, A TRUE STANDARD OF VALUE:
A SYMPOSIUM.
I. BY WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.
We hear much about a "stable currency" and an "honest dollar." It is a
significant fact that those who advocate a single gold standard have
for the most part avoided a discussion of the effect of an
appreciating standard. They take it for granted that a gold standard
is not only an honest standard, but the only stable standard. I
denounce that child of ignorance and avarice, the gold dollar under a
universal gold standard, as the most dishonest dollar which we could
employ.
I stand upon the authority of every intelligent writer upon political
economy when I assert that there is not and never has been an honest
dollar. An honest dollar is a dollar absolutely stable in relation to
all other things. Laughlin, in his work on "Bimetallism," says:
Monometallists do not--as it is often said--believe that gold
remains absolutely stable in value. They hold that there is no
such thing as a "standard of value" for future payments in either
gold or silver which remains absolutely invariable.
He even suggests a multiple standard for long-time contracts. I quote
his words:
As regards national debts, it is distinctly averred that neither
gold nor silver forms a just measure of deferred payments, and
that if justice in long contracts is sought for, we should not
seek it by the doubtful and untried expedient of international
bimetallism, but by the clear and certain method of a multiple
standard, a unit based upon the selling prices of a number of
articles of general consumption. A long time contract would
thereby be paid at its maturity by the same purchasing power as
was given in the beginning.
Jevons, one of the most generally accepted of the writers in favor of
a gold standard, admits the instability of a single standard, and in
language very similar to that above quoted suggests the multiple
standard as the most equitable, if practicable. Chevalier, who wrote
a book in 1858 to show the injustice of allowing a debtor to pay his
debts in a cheap gold dollar, recognized the same fact, and said:
If the value of the metal declined, the creditor would suffer a
loss upon the quantity he had received; if, on the contrary, it
rose, the debtor would have to pay more than he calculated upon.
I am on sound and scientific ground, therefore, when I say that a
dollar approaches honesty as its purchasing power approaches
stability. If I borrow a thousand dollars to-day and next year pay the
debt with a thousand dollars which will secure exactly as much of all
things desirable as the one thousand which I borrowed, I have paid in
honest dollars. If the money has increased or decreased in purchasing
power, I have satisfied my debt with dishonest dollars. While the
government can say that a given weight of gold or silver shall
constitute a dollar, and invest that dollar with legal-tender
qualities, it cannot fix the purchasing power of the dollar. That must
depend upon the law of supply and demand, and it may be well to
suggest that this government never tried to fix the exchangeable value
of a dollar until it began to limit the number of dollars coined.
II. BY M. W. HOWARD.
The term, "a standard of value," so often used, is erroneous and
misleading. There can be no fixed standard of value, and the student
who wishes to delve into our financial problems should clear his mind
of such a fallacy at the very threshold of his investigations.
Money is a commodity; it is regulated by the same laws of supply and
demand which regulate the price of corn, cotton, wheat, land, labor,
etc. If the wheat crop is short, wheat will be dear; if abundant, it
will be cheap. So with money. If the money supply is not sufficient to
meet the demands of business and commerce,--if the money crop is
short, in other words,--the money will be dear; it will command too
high a price, its purchasing power will be too great.
On the other hand, if the money supply is abundant, sufficient to meet
all demands upon it,--in other words, if there is a bountiful money
crop,--it will be cheaper; it will not have such a large purchasing
power; it will be worth less when measured by our labor, our lands,
and the products of our labor.
I oppose the single gold standard because it makes the money crop
short, gives us a small circulating medium, and hence enhances the
value or price of money.
We have a certain demand for breadstuff, which is constantly
increasing as our population multiplies; suppose that we cease
producing corn, and find no substitute for it, would not the price of
wheat be greatly enhanced, providing there is no increased wheat
production? So with the money supply. There is a certain demand for
money, ever increasing as population grows. How shall we meet it? By
producing more money, or by destroying one-half of that which we now
have, by eliminating one-half of the base of future supplies of money?
The latter is now the policy of this government, and as a consequence
the price of gold has been greatly enhanced, and its purchasing power
has increased each year, and will continue to do so.
The advocates of the gold standard call this "honest money." Their
idea of honest money is money that ever increases in purchasing power
because of its ever-increasing scarcity.
My definition of honest money is: "A sufficiently large circulating
medium, whether of gold, silver, or paper, to bring down the price of
money so that we shall obtain fair prices for all labor and products."
Then as population increases and as the demand for money becomes
greater, let the government meet that demand from time to time by
enhancing the money supply.
III. BY WHARTON BARKER.
The true test of an honest dollar is its purchasing power, and that
dollar, and only that dollar, is honest that does exact justice
between creditor and debtor. The gold monometallists harp on the
injustice of a depreciating dollar, but they ignore the injuries
inflicted by an appreciating dollar. They tell us that a depreciating
dollar defrauds the creditor, but just as a depreciating dollar
defrauds the creditor, an appreciating dollar defrauds the debtor, and
it is not one whit worse to defraud the creditor by obliging him to
accept a depreciated dollar from his debtor than to defraud the debtor
by obliging him to pay in a dollar made artificially scarce and dear.
An appreciating dollar works injustice to the debtor just as a
depreciating dollar works injustice to the creditor, but an
appreciating dollar is many fold more injurious to trade and industry,
for while the depreciating dollar taxes the creditor for the benefit
of the debtor, the appreciating dollar takes from the debtor, from
producers in general and the industrious classes, and gives to the
creditor classes, the drones of society, a larger and larger share of
the products of labor, which of necessity discourages industry. Under
a depreciating standard the recompense of the producer becomes greater
and greater, the creditor classes receive a smaller and smaller
portion of the products of labor, the profits of industry increase,
and consequently production is encouraged and trade and industry are
stimulated. But under an appreciating standard the recompense of labor
becomes smaller and smaller, and the share of the products of labor
absorbed by the creditor larger, which tends to discourage industry
and stifle enterprise.
IV. BY ARTHUR I. FONDA.
The value of any commodity is measured by what it will exchange for.
It is in fact its purchasing power, or power in exchange. This in
substance is the concrete definition of value given by all economists,
and they all unite in stating that value is determined by the supply
of a commodity relative to the demand for it; all other factors
affecting value being secondary and acting through their effect on
either supply or demand.
Since both the supply of and the demand for every freely produced
commodity is variable, and since a true standard of value, like a true
standard of weight or length, must be invariable as regards that which
it measures, it necessarily follows that no single freely produced
commodity can be a true standard of value. But while it is true that
every single commodity must vary in value, it is also true that all
commodities taken together cannot do so. This principle is also
accepted as correct by all economists.
It is evident then that a true standard of value can only be found in
a composite unit containing a definite quantity of every commodity, or
practically speaking, a definite quantity of each of a large number of
the most important commodities. This is what is known as the "multiple
standard," or the "commodity standard," and has long been in use by
economists in the form of tables of index numbers to show fluctuations
in general prices, or what is the same thing, changes in money values.
The only function of money is to facilitate the exchange of goods. In
doing this it acts directly as a circulating medium, and the demand
for it for this purpose, relative to the supply, determines its value;
for money, whether of coin or paper or both combined in one
circulation to meet one need, is subject to the same law of supply and
demand which governs all commodities, and which indeed is as universal
in the economic world as the law of gravitation is in the physical
world.
Incidentally the value of money fills the important function of
serving as a measure of the values of goods transferred without the
direct use of money, both immediate and deferred. This, however, has
no effect on the demand for money or on its value.
The people are accustomed to regard money as of constant value, and an
honest money must necessarily conform to this belief. If money varies
in value, the people are deluded, and many are wronged if they are
unaware of the fluctuation. If they become aware of it,--as they
generally do by a bitter experience,--they are confronted with an
uncertainty that is most detrimental to any business or enterprise.
Imagine what our business would be with our measures of weight,
length, and capacity all variable! Yet such a condition would be less
disastrous than a fluctuating money value when it became fully known
that it was so.