A COMPENSATED SOVEREIGN.

This article discusses a plan to make the monetary unit conform to a standard of constant purchasing power over commodities in Great Britain. The original use of money was that a medium of exchange. When gold was settled upon as the best form of money because of its portability, durability, divisibility and concentration of large value in small bulk, money had practically no function as a standard for deferred payments. The plan if virtually to vary the amount of gold in the dollar or sovereign to the extent necessary to keep its purchasing power invariable. The use of an index number of prices, a mean of securing information as to changes in the general price level, can increase and decrease the weight of the sovereign. The government buys gold from the miner and sells it to the jeweller, at the rate of 123.27 grains per sovereign. The proposal to increase or decrease the amount of gold in a bullion-sovereign becomes, then, a proposal for the government to lower or raise the mint price of gold bullion. Using paper representatives like the gold certificates of the U.S. can avoid recoinage in the country. When gold was taken to the government it would not be coined and the certificate would be issued. Gold would only exist only as gold bullion and the only gold sovereign would be a virtual sovereign.