464 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
but no concurrent circulation of both the metals. If the Conferences broke down, it was not because they did not recognize the possibility, which was unanimously upheld by such an impartial tribunal as the Gold and Silver Commission of 1886, of a stable ratio being maintained under a bimetallic regime. They broke down because the bimetallic system did not guarantee the concurrent circulation of the two metals. However, it is certain the impossibility of concurrent circulation could not have been such a drawback if the immediate effect of bimetallism would have been a flow of gold into circulation. But as matters then stood the immediate effect would have been to bring silver into circulation. It was this more than anything else which scared away most of the nations from the adoption of the bimetallic system. Now, it is a curious thing that nations which had assembled together to bring about a stable ratio between gold and silver should have rejected a system which gave a promise of such a stability on the comparatively less significant ground that it had the effect of altering the composition of the circulation from gold to silver. But the fact must be recognized that at the time the question of reconstituting the bimetallic system was agitating the public mind, in most of the European countries gold and silver had ceased to be regarded as equally good for currency purposes. The superiority of gold to silver as a carrier of large value in small bulk was coming more and more to be appreciated in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and no plan of stabilization which did not provide for the unhindered circulation of gold was likely to meet with common approval. This prejudice was in no way confined to a gold-standard country like England. The closing of the Mints by the Latin Union is a proof positive of the change in the attitude of the bimetallic countries. As Jevons argued*:—
“So long …… as its operation resulted in substituting a beautiful coinage of napoleons, half-napoleons, and fivefranc pieces in gold for the old heavy silver ecus, there was no complaint, and the French people admired the action of their compensatory system. But when [after 1873] it became evident that the heavy silver currency was coming back again …… the matter assumed a different form.”
- Money and Mechanism of Exchange, 1890, p. 143.