192 MODERN MONETARY SYSTEMS 
what he will be able to obtain in exchange if he does not 
immediately spend the entire sum he has received. And 
so all security in transactions and all possibility of saving 
disappear unless a coefficient of depreciation is applied 
daily and all sums received can be deposited at once with 
power to withdraw, not the sum deposited, but a sum 
which on the day of withdrawal will be equivalent to it 
after applying a coefficient.! 
It is easy to see how difficult it is to push this system 
to its logical conclusion and to what economic disturbances 
a country will be exposed if it adopts this procedure. 
Hence it is explicable that parliaments and law courts 
will as far as possible use their influence against any legal 
provision which is likely to involve the contracting parties 
in this kind of mechanism. Thus the French law of 
February 12th, 1916, which asserted the principle of 
forced currency, prohibited discrimination between fidu- 
ciary and metal currency, and French courts tend to pro- 
hibit obligations figuring in gold francs for internal 
transactions, even if they do not involve actual payment 
in coin.? 
1 We have seen above how, particularly in Germany, stable accounts 
were opened in gold accounting units, but that this did not satisfactorily 
solve the problem so long as the mark was not stabilised externally. 
2 Tt is obvious that if a contract stipulates for payment in gold francs, 
even if the actual payment is met in paper francs, the necessary result is to 
create, even in internal transactions, a difference between paper francs 
and gold francs, and to provoke in favour of the latter an internal agio 
which it was intended to prohibit under the law of 1916. The courts have 
usually been right in regarding this as a matter of public welfare and it is 
evident that private individuals, in their attempt to avoid the effects of a 
depreciation in the national currency by provisions of this kind, will only 
hasten that depreciation. French courts have, however, been somewhat 
hesitating in the matter, particularly in cases in which the clause “payable 
in gold” is previous to forced currency and also in cases in which it refers 
to long-term contracts (leases), for which we have seen that there is a more 
accurate and more logical solution. 
Finally, it does not always distinguish with sufficient clearness between 
international and internal transactions. In the latter case, the stipulation 
to pay in some appreciated foreign currency is generally inserted for the 
same reasons and has the same effect as the stipulation to pay in gold francs. 
In our opinion, it is therefore erroneous to argue in favour of this clause by