impossible to trace in detail and point by point the fall of so much of the Mercantile System as concerned the regulating of international Page 164 movements of metals. The practice of the commercial world was doubtless in advance of the legislator's standpoint, as indicated by such detached references, and was effectual in completing the revolution silently and under the surface, whether by the aid or in spite of laws and proclamations. The same had been the case, e.g., with the old usury laws.
When effected there are two highly important results which stand as the outcome of this change in the theory of international commerce.
- The perception of a right theory of international balances opened the way to the separation of finance or currency phenomena pure and simple, and so prepared the ground for a scientific conception and treatment of them. In one direction this treatment resulted in the evolution of a theory and practice of a monometallic system—one, i.e., in which a single metal was made the legal tender, and a second or third metal bound to it in a hard-and-fast, subordinate relationship, so that they could not by their oscillations injuriously affect the tenderable metal. In another direction the same scientific conception and treatment resulted in the evolution (and after a time the practice) of a bimetallic theory. Modern currency history hinges on the antagonism of these two systems.
This statement of the case will serve to show the enormous difference between nineteenth-century currency situations and problems Page 165 and those of mediæval and seventeenth-century Europe. To-day the point at