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

PAPER MOXEV VINDICATKD. 79duce it and bring it to market. Say that thisis as his^h as a bushel of wheat for an ounce ofsilver, or four bushels for a sovereign, it is evidentthat if all the civilised world use thesemetals for money, a greater value will at timesattend them ; and an increasing necessity formore money, as the transactions of businessbecome more numerous, will gradually enhancetheir value. Superadd taxation to this, andyou alter instantly the relation they bear to allcommodities. On a large scale we may seehow it affects prices, by observing what has beendone recently through the intervention of papermoney, which, first representing taxation, andthen being withdrawn, left the baneful qualities ofa metallic currency in itsmore frightful aspect,to the full gaze of the public. From some tablesdrawn up by Thomas Attwood, Esq. M.P.,inserted in Mr. Cayley's Commercial Economy,it appears that " a public creditor lending thevalue of 80 bushels of wheat to government,in 1813, (when wheat was 14^. 4d. per bushel,on the average of five years ending then, andconsols were at ,57f the average of that year)receives back in 1821, the value of 224 bushelsof wheat, (corn being 6s. 6d. per bushel, andconsols, 72|, April the 5th, that year) or neartkj^ee times the amount which he lent, besidesXh^full interest in the meanwhile calculated afterthe same proportion." * The public creditor* Commercial Economy. By E. S. Cayley, Esq., M. P.pa^e 16.