The matter is very clearly set forth by Hon. Samuel Smith, M. P.:  “If the question of protection is to be introduced into the discussion, then it will be found to tell more forcibly against our opponents.  What do they seek for, but the protection of gold as against silver?  They wish, as far as lies in their power, to boycott silver and throw the world upon gold alone, even though such a course should change the value of gold.  In trying to boycott silver, they are giving protection to the wealthy capital class, just as truly as the old corn laws did to the landed owners of this country.  The only difference is that the amounts involved are much larger and the protected class much richer and the confiscation of the fruits of the toiler much greater than under the old system of the corn laws.  When the masses of this country awake as those of America have awakened to the magnitude of this question, they will brush away this idle talk that we are trying to restore protection.”  If Mr. Smith were in Congress instead of Parliament, what a howl there would be about him as an anarchist!

It being now the unanimous opinion of English statesmen and financiers that gold has greatly appreciated, and that such enhancement has already wrought great evil, the important question arises, Will this process continue?  In the speech already quoted Mr. Giffen says:  “I am bound to say that all the evidence seems to me to point to a continuance of the appreciation.  It is impossible to suppose that the movement will not extend to other countries.  All these facts point to a continued pressure on gold.  The better probability seems to be, that the increase of the purchasing power of gold will continue from the present time.”

The Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, now the head of the British Cabinet, in a speech delivered at Manchester, October 27, 1892, said:  “We want two things of our currency.  We require that it shall be a convenient medium of exchange between different countries, and we require of it that it shall be a fair and permanent record of obligation over long periods of time.  In both of these great and fundamental requirements of a currency, our existing currency totally and lamentably fails.”  After showing that within fifteen years the money of Great Britain and Ireland had advanced in purchasing power no less than 30 or 35 per cent., he went on to say that of its further progressive appreciation “No living man can prophesy the limit.”  A little later he spoke of it as progressing “steadily, continuously, indefinitely,” and closed his remarks on that subject in these words:  “If you will show me a system which gives absolute permanence, I will take it in preference to any other.  But of all conceivable systems of currency, that system is assuredly the worst which gives you a standard steadily, continuously, indefinitely appreciating, and which by that very fact throws a burden on every man of enterprise, upon every man who desires to promote the agricultural or industrial resources of the country, and benefits no human being whatever but the owner of fixed debts in gold.”