case was a debtor reduced to the condition of destitution and abject poverty which was so prevalent during the reign of the financial rings.
The Rulers, believing with John Ruskin, a Nineteenth Century writer, that "the use of substances of intrinsic value as the materials of a currency is a barbarism," forbade any further production of gold and silver money, and decreed that as soon as the coin then in circulation should have become light or defaced, it should be replaced by notes of the National Bank. It gave the Rulers particular pleasure to issue this decree, as it appeared to them folly, and even worse, to waste such a vast amount of labour in dangerously seeking and mining for metals which were not actually necessary as money. The Rulers regarded with particular horror the hardships of the silverminer's life, and the diseases to which he was peculiarly subject. It was decided that the reserves of the National Bank should be kept in ingots of gold, until the increased confidence of the people in the new order of things should render gold reserves no longer necessary.
The Rulers thus having done all that it appeared to them possible to do by legislation, to bring about the abolition of that private ownership of great wealth, which results in the degradation of the many by the combined, cunning few, determined to rest upon their laurels and await the beneficent influence upon the people, of just, and ennobling laws and institutions.
