=Source.=--_The Times_, March 11.
A meeting convened by the Council of the International Monetary
Standard Association was held in the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion
House.
Mr. Grenfell, Governor of the Bank of England, said ... he presumed
that all present knew that the standard of this country was a
monometallic gold standard, and that it was introduced by that
great statesman Sir Robert Peel; but it was not so generally
known, and it was somewhat singular, that when Sir R. Peel brought
forward the measure for the resumption of cash payments, and for
the institution of a monometallic gold standard, he appealed to
the House of Commons, by all the wish they had to act with good
faith towards their creditors, that they should return to the
ancient standard of the realm. He presumed that Sir R. Peel meant
that the ancient standard of the realm was a gold standard; but it
was not a monometallic standard at all. The ancient standard of
the realm was a bimetallic standard, and although there had been
a monometallic standard before, it was never a gold standard....
What were the events that had occurred since Sir R. Peel's death?
They were entirely new. The first event was the calling together
of a conference in Paris in 1868, for the purpose of attempting
to govern the coinage of all nations, and unfortunately that
conference came to the conclusion that the best of all standards
was a monometallic gold standard. Very shortly afterwards there
came the Franco-German War, and when a large quantity of the
gold of France passed into the hands of Germany, that Government
decided to make a gold standard. Scarcely had that been done, when
the evil arising from the great monetary revolution began to be
shown.... Had they calculated what the cost of the demonetization
of Germany was? The amount the German Government coined was
87,000,000 sterling of gold, which, according to the average for
the last twenty years, was equal to 3.3 years of the whole world's
production of gold. Besides that, Germany sold 28,000,000 sterling
of silver, which was equal to more than two years' production of
the whole world of that metal. What did they think, supposing the
Latin Union, our Indian Empire, and the United States were to
resort to some such measure as Germany did?