Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/305

 Reform that "the gold standard is already a barbarous relic" and that "the Cunliffe Report belongs to an extinct and an almost forgotten order of ideas." He puts the case for the gold standard into one limpid sentence. "The advocates of gold, as against a more scientific standard, base their cause on the double contention, that in practice gold has provided and will provide a reasonably stable standard of value, and that in practice, since governing authorities lack wisdom as often as not, a managed currency will, sooner or later, come to grief." He admits the remarkable success with which "gold maintained its stability of value in the changing world of the nineteenth century," but he thinks that "we have no sufficient ground for expecting the continuance of the special conditions which preserved a sort of balance before the war." He shows that during the nineteenth century progress in the discovery of gold mines roughly kept pace with progress in other directions, but in his opinion, "this stage of history is now almost at an end. A quarter of a century has passed by since the discovery of an important deposit." If this be so, those who are seeking capital for the development of what is alleged to be a wonderful new field in Canada have lively imaginations. Moreover, if it be so, the disposal of