just as heavy to pay as they are now, and if the precious metals taken together rose relatively to commodities, debtors would have no recourse to anything else. Now this chance of recourse, when the standard of value rose, was just what Wolowski wanted. His language is very guarded and scientific. He never went further than to say that his scheme would restrain and limit the fluctuations of the metals — how far he did not know and did not pretend to say. He thought the fluctuations would be so narrow that the transition from one metal to the other would be a relief to debtors without any appreciable injustice to creditors. All this is very clear and very sensible. On theory it is open to no radical objection. The discussion of it turns upon considerations of practicability and expediency. It is much to be wished that this plan should be called by its proper name: the alternative standard, or, better still, the alternate standard. It counts among its adherents a number of strong men, and many others have signified assent to it on theoretical grounds.
The term "bimetallism" ought to be restricted to another theory of which Cernuschi is the advocate, which has for its purpose to unite the two metals at once in the circulation and give debtors the whole mass of both metals as a means of payment. Cernuschi believes that the international coinage union could arrest the fluctuations of the metals entirely; or that there is some narrow limit of fluctuation within which both would remain in use, and that the coinage union could hold the value-fluctuations of the metals within these limits. The American schemes are numerous and so crude that it is difficult to analyze or classify them. They are also of many different grades. They all, however, seem to have this in common, that they want to secure to the debtor the use of both metals at once, and that they aim at a concurrent circulation. They must, therefore, be classed under bi-
