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obliged to export it. The theorists who uphold the wonderful dogma just referred to are lost in wonder over the 'drain of gold,' and are always asking some one to tell them what becomes of it. It goes towards the payment of our debts—that is the heart of the mystery. But this explanation does not satisfy the economists, and we find them, in despite of all evidence and reason, clinging hard and fast to an exploded delusion of an effete school, concocted during a period essentially different in all respects from the present." These are strong words. Let us look at them a little closer. He says we are paying our debts by selling our American and other foreign bonds. Indeed! If so, when did the process commence? There is not a single year, for the last twenty years, in which our imports have not exceeded our exports by at least 50 millions, the amount of the excess in the aggregate being something like 1,500 millions. And yet, at the end of this period, which comprises more than half the Free Trade epoch, and during which the country is said to have been getting rapidly impoverished, he makes out that we have in our strong box 2,000 millions of the world's obligations! What can be this writer's idea of "evidence and reason?" Both flatly contradict him. How did we get these 2,000 millions of bonds? We must have got at least half of them during the last twenty years. But during this time we had imported on balance over 100 millions of bullion! How can we be getting in goods, bonds, and bullion from the rest of the world, owing nobody anything, and at one and the same time be impoverishing ourselves? But, he makes some obscure reference to a "drain of gold." Coupling this with his idea of our paying away our American and other bonds, I think I can pluck out what he calls "the heart of the mystery." It is matter of common knowledge that from 1877 to 1879, three years, European harvests were deficient and American harvests plentiful. The harvest of Europe in 1879 was about the worst ever known. This state of things was good for the United States, and bad for Europe. The demand for corn was enormous; and as the United States had it to sell, they were enabled to turn it into money, and with the proceeds to do two most im-