The Great Power

issued by the Foreign Office, in the Board of Trade Statistical Abstracts and other Returns, and in the rapidly increasing crop of currency publications now springing up on all sides.

Those who labour in far corners of the British Empire, may sometimes perceive facts that are not so clearly visible to the many at home. A residence of some years amongst the industries of the East has not only enabled the author to experience the power and utility of a monetary system other than that employed by Great Britain, but it has at the same time afforded him ocular demonstration of the check to British enterprise, and the loss to British trade, which has arisen owing solely to the recent fluctuation in the relative values of gold and silver. He claims, therefore, to speak with some authority on the practical side of his subject.

Money is the Great Power: that all admit. But in the United Kingdom there is another Great Power, without the aid of which progress is delayed, and reform indefinitely postponed: and that Power is the Press. Up to the present the greater portion of the Press has not shown. much active interest in currency reform, and in this respect it has doubtless reflected popular feeling. But Blue Books and statistics are not popular forms of literature, and it is hardly to be expected that phenomena which are

only clearly perceptible through such media will attract public attention, except by the aid of the Press. And what better subject could be found for treatment by the British Press than facts and figures in which are involved the prosperity and welfare of the British Empire ?

For the ready reference of those who may desire to acquaint themselves with the exact letter of the law regarding the extent of the control over the currency exercised by the Legislature of the United Kingdom, the Coinage Acts of 1870, 1889, and 1891 are added to this work, and will be found in Appendices A, B, and C.

Knihy