[To MB EDITOR OP Tax " SPIWTATOP..” . 1 SIR,—Mr. Harold Cox
has gained the right to argue on monetary questions. He quotes John Stuart Mill : "If the whole money in circulation was doubled, prices would be doubled." Mr. Cox disagrees. But how could the money "in circulation" be doubled if prices were not doubled ? Unless the prices went up, the extra money would not circulate. Thoughtful people will, I think, prefer Mr. Mill's "crude statement" to Mr. Con's last two paragraphs. Mr. Cox seems to mean that a sovereign, or one-pound cheque, or book-entry, &c., has a fixed value. Apart from certain temporary con- ventions, is this so ? Does he seriously contend that to-day I can buy as many loaves of bread with a sovereign as I could buy with one six months ago, or, to use his own example of the physician, that a sovereign will go as far in paying a consulting physician to-day as it went forty years ago ? Mr. Cox says that "these attributes of a sovereign," meaning apparently its value, do not "depend on the constantly fluctuating prices of staple commodities "; but the value of a sovereign does depend on these prices when compared with them. I can get more or less of the articles for a sovereign at one time or another.—I am, Sir, &c.,
CHARLES S. JERRAN.
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