How was it through all these years with the industrial and financial condition of France?  It would indeed be little to the purpose to prove that she had maintained the metals at a parity by free coinage, if, in the meantime, her people had suffered loss.  Monometallists tell us that not only is bimetallism impossible, but that the attempt to maintain it is in every way hurtful, in fact, disastrous.  They point us to the fact that England is the clearing house of the world; that those whose currency is not assimilated to that of England are subjected to enormous losses in the exchange, resulting from fluctuations; that by attempting bimetallism a nation puts itself in the second or third rank, and that the results are in every way bad.  Well, all those conditions applied to France.  She, like the United States, may be considered as regarding England in the light of the world’s clearing house, and her currency may be said to have fluctuated, as they declare ours would, with bimetallism.  What, then, have been the general results to France?  What effect has it had upon her commercial, social, and industrial development?  On this point let us return thanks that the testimony is universal.  No other nation in the world has made such stupendous progress in the general improvement of her people as France has made since 1803.  No civilized country probably had sunk to such depths of popular misery as had France at the beginning of her revolution, and we can hardly believe that the subsequent fourteen years of war and internal turmoil had greatly improved her condition when the policy of 1803 was adopted.

[Illustration:  The above diagram shows the course of the commercial ratio of the values of gold and silver during the bimetallic period of France.  The upper dotted line (A) shows the extreme high limit of ratio, and the lower dotted line (C) the extreme low limit reached from the years 1803 to 1873.  The central line (B) is the mint ratio of 15.50 to 1 fixed by the French Government in 1803.  The variable line (D) is the commercial ratio of the values of the two metals during that period.  Note the slight variation in this ratio from 1803 to 1873, during which time the bimetallic action of the French law was operative, and then contrast it with the sudden and swift descent of the ratio after the demonetization of silver by the various nations in 1873 and 1875.]

Bimetallism and a rigid adherence to a specie basis were two of the means adopted by Bonaparte to restore France, and during all his wars, with their terrible expenses, he never once departed from the specie standard.  After the Act of 1803 France was still to have twelve years of war and severe trial.  She has subsequently had two revolutions and a foreign war, singularly destructive in its course, and ending in her subjugation, the occupation of her territory, and the loss of two of her wealthiest provinces.