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

62 PAPER MONEY VINDICATED.seventy-three years, during which the bountyon exportation was in use, we see that its effectwas, as might be expected, a violent derangementof the current price of corn, causing itto fluctuate in periods of ten years each from51*. 2d. to 31*. 9^. per quarter; and, in singleyears, from 69*. ^d. (in 1709 and 1710), to22*. \d. (in 1743 and 1744), the highest andlowest prices on record, from 1595 to 1795,(with the exception of the two anomalous years,1648 and 1649.) There is ample reason, therefore,to join with these high authorities incondemning the system of bounties on corn,although that effect did not follow which theyattribute to it — a general rise of price. Dr.Smith endeavours to explain how this failed tohappen, by supposing a general scarcity ofsilver for the time ;but he is forced to abandonthis theory in speaking of the period of greatestdecline, viz, from 1741 to 1750. If we concludethat taxation required the price whichon the average was obtained, and that thebounty did nothing more than embarrass theregular course of production which, withoutlegislative interference, would have gone onsmoothly ; we shall form, as it appears fromthe fact, a more accurate judgment.2. From 1765 (by the suspension of thebounty) and from 1773, by the passing of a newact, the former principle of a bounty up to 48*.per quarter, was restricted to 44*. per quarter.