A Popular Treatise on the Currency Question Written from a Southern Point of View |
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Common terms and phrases
aggregate American amount annual bank notes Bank of England Bank of France banking method banks of issue base money bonds Britain bullion capital classes coin money commerce commodities common law Congress Constitution contraction demand demonetization depreciated currency depreciation discount dred efflux and reflux Europe exchange existing exports fact fee simple fiat fluctuations foreign coin France G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Germany gold and silver Government Greenback party hundred millions increase inflated intrinsic value irredeemable paper money legal tender legal-tender mankind measure ment metallic money millions of dollars necessity over-issuing paper circulation paper currency paper issues payment period precious metals principle produce prosperity public debts quantity of money rate of interest ratio received redeemable regulate the value rency silver coins society South Sea Bubble specie substance things thousand millions tion United United States Treasurer Virginia volume
Popular passages
Page 46 - ... some time is required before the money circulates through the whole state, and makes its effect be felt on all ranks of people. At first, no alteration is perceived; by degrees the price rises, first of one commodity, then of another; till the whole at last reaches a just proportion with the new quantity of specie which is in the kingdom.
Page 153 - Nothing could be purchased without a dispute. Over every counter there was wrangling from morning to night. The workman and his employer had a quarrel as regularly as the Saturday came round. On a fair day or a market day the clamors, the reproaches, the taunts, the curses, were incessant ; and it was well if no booth was overturned and no head broken...
Page 149 - The very man of all others who has the deepest interest in a sound currency, and who suffers most by mischievous legislation in money matters, is the man who earns his daily bread by his daily toil.
Page 150 - A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils. It undermines the virtues necessary for the support of the social system, and encourages propensities destructive of its happiness. It wars against industry, frugality, and economy, and it fosters the evil spirits of extravagance and speculation.
Page 152 - Yet it may well be doubted whether all the misery which had been inflicted on the English nation in a quarter of a century by bad Kings, bad Ministers, bad Parliaments, and bad Judges, was equal to the misery caused in a single year by bad crowns and bad shillings.
Page 152 - The evil was felt daily and hourly in almost every place and by almost every class, in the dairy and on the threshing floor, by the anvil and by the loom, on the billows of the ocean and in the depths of the mine. Nothing could be purchased without a dispute. Over every counter there was wrangling from morning to night. The workman and his employer had a quarrel as regularly as the Saturday came round.
Page 142 - ... ineffectual to its purposes, but in every instance increased the evils it was designed to remedy, and destroyed the benefits it was intended to promote. At best its utmost effect was like that of water sprinkled on a blacksmith's forge, which indeed deadens the flame for a moment, but never fails to increase the heat and force of the internal fire. Many thousand families of full and easy fortune were ruined by these fatal measures, and lie in ruins to this day, without the least benefit to the...
Page 177 - ... no State shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.
Page 141 - This ruinous principle was continued in practice for five successive years, and appeared in. all shapes and forms, ie in tender acts, in limitations of prices, in awful and threatening declarations, in penal laws with dreadful and ruinous punishments, and in every other way that could be devised, and all executed with a relentless severity, by the highest authorities then in being, viz., by Congress, by assemblies and conventions of the States, by committees of inspection (whose powers in those days...
Page 152 - The evil proceeded with constantly accelerating velocity. At length in the autumn of 1695 it could hardly be said that the country possessed, for practical purposes, any measure of the value of commodities. It was a mere chance whether what was called a shilling was really tenpence, sixpence, or a groat.