as before, that of a silver standard, with gold as trade money. The fourth Handelstag met at Berlin in October 1868, and again the matter was most seriously discussed. Page 214 With the single exception of the Berlin members, all the deputies declared for the adoption of the gold standard. As, in the preceding year, Austria had withdrawn from the German Monetary Union of 1857, she no longer stood in the way of this proposition, and the erection of the North German Union distinctly favoured the project.
In June 1870 the Bundesrath of the North German Union resolved upon a reform and unification of the paper money, as preparatory to a complete currency reform, and in the same month the Chancellor of the North German Union had decided to call a Mint Convention. The outbreak of the Franco-German War immediately afterwards put a short stop to the proposal.
A long train of preparation had thus been laid, and there can be little doubt as to what the ultimate direction of German monetary legislation would have been, even without the war, and the consequent erection of the Empire. That the latter event, however, enormously facilitated the process cannot for a moment be questioned.
When the subject was taken up after the Franco-German War, the determination to adopt a gold coinage was only gradually arrived at. In the original plan, as drafted soon after the conclusion of peace, the new gold coinage proposed was intended not to be tenderable, for the meantime, in private commerce. Such a provision roused all the opposition of the mercantile community, and