Currency fallacies refuted, and paper money ... - University Library

PAPER MONEY VINTDICATED. 83According to this doctrine, we are bound upin a golden chain, from which there is no possibilityof escape ;and though the choice of payingthe taxes by a diminution of profits, or a riseof prices, is offered us, the truth comes out thatwe have " Hobson's choice," the first or none. *The principle is undoubtedly correct, thatwithout an injiu.v of gold, " there could be iioincrease of quantity, no fall in its value, no i^isein the general price of goods." But what shallwe say to the fact, that ever since the year1797, there has been a rise in the general priceof goods ? Is it not a proof that there musthave beeji an ittfliLv of gold? — since, otherwise,there would have been no increaseof quantity,no fall in its value. How, then, is that influx* Mr. Ricardo did not perceive that paper money, if it addedto prices only so much beyond gold as the taxes called for,would not disturb in any degree the natural price of commodities; that it would leave us at liberty to sell them abroad, orto bring the productions of foreigners for sale here, with thesame advantage as before. He did not see, that with thisaddition to natural price, the taxes would be charged to theconsumer without the necessity of an influx of gold to supportthem — which, as he correctly reasons, could not behad. He speaks, indeed, of the depreciation of paper incomparison with gold, as if he conceived the way in whichthe taxes might be added ; but he did not suffer his mind todwell long enough on the idea to discover that, if the depreciationwas nothing more than the difference between naturalprice on the one hand, and taxation, added to natural price,on the other, it was not a depreciation to be condemned, but" a consummation most devoutly to be wished."G 2