In 1867 the price of silver had again declined, so that the French
ratio of 15½ was substantially identical with the market ratio. That
was the year of the International Monetary Conference, of which mention
has already been made, at which France voted in favor of the single
gold standard. Nevertheless, the French legislators abandoned the
silver standard with extreme reluctance. They were attached to it by
custom and tradition. They still desired, like their ancestors of the
Revolution, to have the silver standard with gold as a subordinate
metal. They allowed events to drift until 1873, when they were startled
to find that 154,000,000 francs’ worth of silver had been deposited at
the mint for coinage in that year, against only 5,000,000 francs’ worth
in 1871–2. The amount of silver so deposited was more than the mint
could coin in a year and a half, if it did nothing else. The market
ratio of gold had risen nearly to 15.75. There was a profit of 1½ per
cent. in sending silver bullion to the mint and using the resulting
coin to buy gold for export. The delegates of the Latin Monetary Union
were hastily assembled and they determined to limit the coinage of
silver to 120,000,000 francs per year for all the countries concerned.
This was virtually the adoption of the gold standard.
At the beginning of 1876 the market ratio had reached nearly seventeen
to one. The crisis was becoming acute. Switzerland had ceased to coin
her allotted share of silver. Belgium had passed a law authorizing
the Government to stop coining that metal. M. Leon Say, the French
Minister of Finance, sent to the Senate March 21, 1876, a bill of only
two lines, in these words, viz.: “The coinage of silver five-franc
pieces may be limited or suspended by decree.” The Senate Committee to
which it was referred, under the lead of M. de Parieu, reported a more
drastic measure absolutely forbidding the coinage of any silver money
of full legal tender. The legislative body again showed its aversion
to change by rejecting the Senate report and adopting, on the 5th of
August, the more moderate measure of the Minister of Finance. But it
really made no difference which of the two was adopted. The door of the
French mint was closed to silver on the following day, and has not been
reopened.
I think it has been shown that the gold standard made its way in France
not only without design on the part of individuals, but in spite of the
strenuous resistance of almost all the men who busied themselves with
the subject at all. I have given a good deal of space to the experience
of France, because of the great importance which has always been
assigned to that country by the advocates of bimetallism.