■ ' ■ -VVO* BY 
 
 GEO. HARDING, 
 fi4 Great Russell street, 
 LONDON. W ,C, 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 33)0 
 

 
 
* »>% 
 
 

 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
*» 
 
THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH 
 
 by 
 
 JOHN CRAWFORD. 
 
 “ MAGNAS INTER OPES — INOPS.” 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN & LONGMANS. 
 
 M. DCCCyXLVT. 
 
330 
 
 • * 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED BY JOHN WERTHEIMER AND CD. 
 
 FINSBURY CIRCUS, 
 
/ ?/-'/ 3 H ' - <■ ' , a. y 5 / > 2 }') ? 0 a , H 
 
 TO 
 
 JOHN TAYLOK, Esq., 
 
 AUTHOR OF “JUNIUS IDENTIFIED,” “CURRENCY INVESTIGATED,” ETC. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 I dedicate this little volume to you. 
 To my introduction to “ the Society for the Eman- 
 cipation of Industry” about eighteen months ago, 
 and to my acquaintance with your writings, I 
 am indebted for any precise knowledge I can lay 
 claim to of the subjects of Money and Currency, 
 of which, previously, as is the case with too 
 many, I had only a very vague and indistinct 
 idea. 
 
 In your hands, the subject of the Currency has 
 assumed the rank of a science; and, reflected in 
 the light of the unerring principles which you 
 have developed, our present monetary system, as 
 constituted by the enactments of 1819, 1844 and 
 1845, is seen to be, not merely a congeries of 
 blunders and inconsistencies, but, in its operation, 
 
VI 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 an engine of fearful injustice and oppression to 
 the industrious classes of our country. 
 
 While, therefore, all who have the well-being 
 of the great body of their fellow-men at heart, 
 must feel indebted to you for the valuable service 
 you have rendered to the cause of truth, justice 
 and humanity ; all must feel likewise indebted to 
 u the Society for the Emancipation of Industry,” 
 and particularly to the Chairman and Secretary, 
 who have so liberally supported it, for their 
 patriotic endeavours to diffuse a knowledge of 
 your principles, with a view to their being carried 
 into practical effect, by means of a repeal of 
 our present money laws, and the enactment of a 
 totally new and improved monetary system. 
 
 It will at once be seen, that the present Volume 
 is only an humble attempt to aid the common 
 cause, by furnishing a digest or compendium of 
 the science, as elaborated in your writings, of 
 which I have accordingly not hesitated freely to 
 avail myself in the course of my task. 
 
 A knowledge of the subject of the Currency is 
 progressing ip the public mind — if not so rapidly 
 as may be desirable, at least surely; and those 
 commercial changes which have been recently 
 propounded to the Legislature, whatever their 
 author may think, will only hasten the advent 
 of monetary reform, as a measure of imperious 
 necessity to avert the sufferings of the people, 
 which those changes will not alleviate, but so 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 Vll 
 
 aggravate, that at last they will become no 
 longer endurable, and may lead, perchance, to 
 the overthrow of the State. 
 
 In the mean time, in your own language, “ as 
 lovers of our country — as lovers of our kind — as 
 lovers of justice, and haters of oppression — as 
 men and Christians — let us protest against, 
 and CONDEMN that change of currency, which 
 enhanced the value of money in a degree hitherto 
 unheard of in the history of nations, even 50 per 
 cent., in the face of our enormous public and 
 private debts, and of the heaviest taxation 
 which it has been found possible to inflict on the 
 country.’’ 
 
 I remain, 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 Yours very truly and faithfully, 
 
 John Crawford. 
 
 London, 23d February, 1846. 
 

 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The first Edition of this work, “ The Philosophy 
 of Wealth,” was published anonymously at Pais- 
 ley, in 1837. The questio vex at a of the Currency 
 could be judged of then, only according to the 
 conflicting opinions of the advocates of an un- 
 limited issue of paper money on the one hand, 
 and of an exclusively metallic currency on the 
 other; of which parties Mr. Attwood, of Birming- 
 ham, and the late Mr. Cobbett, were the respective 
 representatives. 
 
 The Author had imbibed Mr. Attwood’s ideas ; 
 but it is no disparagement of Mr. Attwood to con- 
 fess, that from Mr. Taylor’s writings only has he 
 recently learned the true nature and functions of 
 MONEY and its relation to taxation — that the de~ 
 preciation of the pound of account during the 
 war, instead of being an evil, as Mr. Cobbett 
 maintained, was an excellence, in fact an absolute 
 necessity and unavoidable consequence, in order 
 to preserve the ratio betwixt gold and other 
 values — and that its depreciation by the act of 
 1819, and the subsequent enactments of 1844 and 
 1845, has destroyed this equation , and conse- 
 quently inflicted, and still continues to inflict, the 
 most grievous injustice on the industrious and 
 laboring classes of our country, by throwing the 
 whole burden of indirect taxation on them, in 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 short, is the cause of all the social misery and 
 degradation which exists among so large a pro- 
 portion of our fellow-countrymen, and which, it 
 is melancholy to think, will inevitably be aggra- 
 vated instead of diminished, far less removed, 
 by the cheap course of policy which our modern 
 race of pseudo statesmen and legislators see fit 
 to persevere in. 
 
 One man in the senate — a minister of the 
 Crown, a colleague of Sir Robert Peel — under- 
 stands the effects of cheap commodities and cheap 
 labor: he knows, that just in proportion as you 
 cheapen all commodities in relation to money, you 
 enhance the value of money — you make money 
 dear . How Sir James Graham can tacitly sanc- 
 
 tion the doctrine uttered by Sir Robert Peel, that 
 cheap commodities, or low prices alleviate rather 
 than aggravate taxation, and lighten, rather than 
 increase the burdens of the people, is inexpli- 
 cable. The author of “ Corn and Currency ” 
 certainly owes an explanation on this head. 
 
 When once the people are enlightened on the 
 subject of the Currency, and understand how 
 they are defrauded by a false standard of value, 
 execrations, “ not loud but deep,” will be heaped 
 on the heads of the men who enacted, and who 
 continue to uphold, the infamous law of 1819. 
 
 February 9, 1846. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introductory Observations , 1 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 What is Wealth? 12 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 What is the Standard oe Value, etc 21 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 What is Money, or Currency? 33 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Banks and Banking, and the Monetary System 
 
 of England 40 
 
 CHAPTER V, 
 
 Sir Robert Peel’s Bill of 1819, and Measures 
 of 1844 and 1845 61 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Remedy 89 
 

 
 *•' ,v- • 
 
* 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 s 
 
 INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 The object of the science of political eco- 
 nomy, or, in other words, the PHILOSOPHY OP 
 WEALTH, is to teach how the greatest amount of 
 WEALTH may be produced in a community, and 
 how the same may be most equitably diffused 
 amongst all its members, so as to ensure their 
 general comfort and happiness. It is considered 
 that the term SOCIAL ECONOMY would better 
 express this object than the term political 
 ECONOMY: but it is too late in the day to 
 
 quarrel with the mere name of the science. What 
 we have to do is to deal with some erroneous 
 dogmas wdiich have been taught in its name, and 
 to point out, that, in one particular branch, the 
 system, as established in this country, is very 
 imperfect. Adam Smith, the founder of the 
 science in England, and his followers, treat only 
 of the creation of wealth, but exclude from all 
 consideration that equally important branch, the 
 equitable distribution of wealth when created. 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 This latter branch of the science has, however* 
 received considerable attention within the last two 
 or three years ; not so much from the English 
 as from the French and other continental econ- 
 omists. Sismondi, in particular, in his u Etudes 
 Societies” exposes the mighty social evils which 
 have arisen in England and in other countries 
 from the false or partial systems of political 
 economy which have been taught, and the short- 
 sighted and erroneous doctrine, that the creation 
 and indefinite accumulation of wealth ought 
 to be the great end of individual and national 
 enterprise— the ruling spirit of legislation and 
 state policy. The only writer in England with 
 whom we are acquainted, who, in our opinion, 
 has traced these evils to their true source, is 
 John Taylor, the author of u Currency Investi- 
 gated.”* Mr. Taylor lays it down, that money 
 is the proper distributive agent of the products of 
 industry; but that, from the erroneous, unscien- 
 tific, and inapplicable system of money which is 
 established in England, and the false theories on 
 
 * It would be wrong to omit mentioning the writings of 
 the Rev. Mr. Cruttwell, of Spexhall Rectory, Suffolk ; or not 
 to notice the recent admirable work of Sheriff* Alison, the 
 learned historian of Europe, entitled “England in 1815 and 
 1845; or a Sufficient and Contracted Currency Compared,” in 
 which the evil effects of our present monetary system are 
 most forcibly illustrated. It is impossible, indeed, to contro- 
 vert the facts and arguments adduced by Mr. Alison. Neither 
 should we omit mentioning the writings of Mr. James Taylor, 
 of Bakewell, and of Mr. Edward Capps, both of whom have 
 written several excellent works on the Currency, a list of 
 which will be found appended to this volume. 
 
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 3 
 
 which it is founded, its aggregate quantity being 
 restricted, notwithstanding the great amount of 
 taxes with which the country is burdened, not- 
 withstanding the great increase of population, not- 
 withstanding the corresponding increase of their 
 powers of production, the people are without 
 an adequate agent for distributing the wealth 
 which they create; and hence, that for want 
 of a readily available means of exchanging 
 their several products, the country presents the 
 strange and astounding spectacle in this age of 
 enlightenment, of a people complaining of want 
 — literally starving — in the midst of abundance 
 of food and clothing, and every variety of real 
 wealth which can subserve human wants or de- 
 sires, whether necessities, comforts, or luxuries. 
 
 To erroneous doctrines, then, propagated in 
 the name of political economy, are we to ascribe 
 the huge anomaly which the CONDITION OF 
 England presents — “ great riches dwelling side 
 by side with great poverty;” “the rich getting 
 richer, and the pooupoorer every day.” And to 
 what but the erroneous notions they have imbibed 
 in the school of political economy in which they 
 have been taught, is it owing that our leading 
 statesmen and legislators have declared in parlia- 
 ment that such inequality is “ the inevitable 
 result of civilisation,” — '“an evil beyond the 
 reach of legislation, for which it is in vain to 
 attempt to find a remedy !” 
 
4 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH, 
 
 The following description of the condition of 
 England in the present day may be considered 
 authoritative. It is quoted from Laing’s Prize 
 Essay, published early in 1844. Mr. Laing, 
 after adducing the various statistical data, and 
 other authorities from which he deduces his con- 
 clusions, sums up in the following words : — 
 
 “ The main fact which strikes us is the existence 
 of a vast mass of extreme destitution and abject degra- 
 dation, by the side of enormous wealth, rapid material 
 progress, national greatness and security, and all the 
 symptoms of a flourishing civilization. On examining 
 more minutely the details furnished by recent evi- 
 dence and statistical returns, we find this destitution 
 and degradation to be at the same time more intense 
 and more extensive than could have been believed 
 possible. In all our large cities and populous manu- 
 facturing districts a very large proportion of the 
 population are living either without any certain 
 means of subsistence, or on wages utterly inadequate 
 to maintain a decent existence, while among those 
 whose earnings are sufficient to support them in 
 respectability, thousands are reduced by intemperance, 
 improvidence, and the vices resulting from ignorance, 
 and the absence of moral and religious principle, to 
 the standard of the starving beggar and prostitute. 
 This squalid mass of misery, fostered by neglect, 
 multiplied by its own inherent tendency, and swollen 
 by the continual influx of Irish immigrants, rural 
 laborers in search of employment, and manufacturing 
 operatives reduced to poverty by strikes, improve- 
 
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 5 
 
 inents in machinery, and vicissitudes in trade, ad- 
 vances continually; and although ravaged by the 
 typhus fever, or decimated by a frightful mortality, 
 encroaches more and more on the boundaries of civi- 
 lization, threatening to sweep away the whole fabric 
 of society in a deluge of barbarism. Nor is the evil 
 confined to towns ; on the contrary, we find an appalling 
 amount of pauperism in many of the rural districts, 
 and have distinct evidence that the bulk of the rural 
 population are utterly unable to provide against sick- 
 ness, old age, and fluctuations in employment. Among 
 the other classes of the labouring population we find 
 less physical want, but too frequently gross and 
 heathen ignorance, intemperance, improvidence, and a 
 dangerous feeling of exasperation against the higher 
 classes. On the ivhole we have seen reason to believe 
 that not less than a fifth or sixth part of the total popu- 
 lation exists in a state of destitution and want , depending 
 in a great measure either on public or private charity , or 
 on criminal resources, for a part of their support , while 
 another numerous class are just able to maintain them- 
 selves on the brink of this gulf of pauperism , ivhile 
 enjoying health or strength and in full employment, with 
 the certainty of falling back into it with the first accident 
 which renders their daily labor no longer a marketable 
 commodity. 
 
 u The laboring population, ground down in the un- 
 equal conflict between capital and labor, and demoralized 
 alike by the neglect and by the example of the upper 
 classes, have taken the only effectual method of re- 
 venging themselves, that of multiplying their numbers, 
 and threatening society with an increasing mass 
 
6 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 of misery and want. Distress, spreading more and 
 more widely, is invading fresli classes, and with each 
 recurring paroxysm of trade, and period of com- 
 mercial depression, is threatening to engulf those 
 who have hitherto escaped its ravages.” 
 
 Now, if the foregoing be a correct description ; 
 and, notwithstanding the flushed and temporary 
 prosperity which may have visited the manu- 
 facturing districts during the years 1844 and 
 1845, and the increased employment afforded to 
 great numbers by railway speculation and enter- 
 prise during the last twelve months, we believe it 
 to be as applicable now (January, 1846) as it was 
 when written; we would ask, Of what benefit or 
 advantage is all our u civilisation ” our u material 
 progress” our u enormous wealth ,” so far as the great 
 body of the people, who are dependent on their 
 daily labor for their subsistence, is concerned ? 
 They form three-fourths, and if the pauper po- 
 pulation * be included, six-sevenths, or at the 
 very least 24,000,000 out of 28,000,000 who in- 
 habit the British islands. Does u civilisation ” 
 exist for them, or for the remaining 4,000,000* 
 or more correctly 3,000,000, in whose lianas are 
 accumulated all the wealth or “ capital,” as 
 it is called, created by the labok of their toiling 
 
 * Paupers in England 1,800,000 
 „ Scotland 200,000 
 „ Ireland 2,000,000 
 
 4,000,000 
 
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 7 
 
 and Industrious fellow countrymen ? May not 
 44 civilisation,” in this tlie misapplication of Tire 
 term, signify only the WEALTH or CAPITAL of the 
 country, unprecedented in its amount, vast as it 
 may be, directed doubtless by intelligence, but de- 
 void of true Christian feeling or brotherly love, 
 and animated solely by the spirit of gain, and mor- 
 bid acquisitiveness, and individual and national 
 aggrandisement, which our false systems of poli- 
 tical economy have inspired? 
 
 44 The laboring population are ground down in 
 the unequal conflict between Capital and Labor." 
 
 This is the fact ; and in these words of Mr. 
 Laing lies the solution of the CONDITION of 
 England problem ; the explanation of the 
 anomaly of 44 enormous wealth ” dwelling side by 
 side with 44 extreme destitution ” and 44 abject de- 
 gradation fl and of our laboring population, the 
 marrow of the community, living continually on 
 the brink of pauperism, and liable to be en- 
 gulfed whenever one of those recurring u panics" 
 to which we are now, by our monetary system, 
 necessarily and unavoidably subject happens, 
 and causes a stagnation of trade- — lowering their 
 wages or depriving them altogether of employ- 
 ment and reducing them to starvation. 
 
 To say that human legislation can devise no 
 remedy for the protection of 44 labor ” in this 
 unequal conflict with 44 capital,” as Sir Robert 
 Reel declared last session in the House of Com 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 mons, and as was re-echoed by Lord Brougham 
 and Lord John Bussell, may be a convenient 
 enough excuse for incompetent legislation, and 
 may be vastly pleasing to all ‘“capitalists,” who 
 profit by cheap goods and cheap labor, and are en- 
 abled to add to their accumulated hoards and over- 
 grown wealth by the degradation and serfdom of 
 their fellow men ; and it may be also perfectly con- 
 sistent w^th established or recognised doctrines 
 of political economy,, and the ideas which prevail 
 on the subject of “ capital;” but, in our opinion, 
 it is an arraignment of the goodness of the Deity, 
 who never willed that his creatures should toil 
 in the sweat of their brow, and that not they, 
 nor their wives and children, but strangers, 
 should eat the bread earned thereby. 
 
 It becomes an imperative duty to investigate 
 this relation betwixt “ capital” and “labor” — * 
 to see whether it is a just relation, or whether it 
 is not based on entirely false and. erroneous ideas 
 respecting “capital,” arising from imperfect 
 definitions of the term by writers on political 
 economy; and whether, in consequence, “capi- 
 tal” has not been allowed to acquire an undue as- 
 cendancy over “ labor”; and whether it be not * 
 at the same time, usurping, in a gradual, stealthy, 
 and insidious manner, domination over land as 
 well as labor ; and, indeed, over every other 
 species of real wealth in the country. 
 
 In pursuing this inquiry, we intend freely to 
 
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 9 
 
 avail ourselves of the labors of Mr. Taylor, to 
 whose writings w'e have previously alluded, and 
 whom we regard as by far the greatest authority 
 on the subject in England at the present day. 
 His volume entitled “ Currency Investigated” is 
 a learned and philosophical exposition of the 
 false system of money established in this country 
 in 1819, by Sir Kobert Peel, by the Act com- 
 monly known by the name of “ Peeks Bill,” and 
 of the enormous wrongs which it has inflicted on 
 the industrious classes of the nation — confirmed 
 and aggravated as these have been by the com- 
 plemental measures of 1844 and 1845, which 
 were passed expressly for the purpose of making 
 more stringent the monopoly of MONEY in the 
 United Kingdom, and to increase still more the 
 ascendancy of “ capital” over “labor.” In- 
 deed, in the task we have now assumed, we pre- 
 tend to give no more than a digest or compen- 
 dium of Mr. Taylor’s doctrines. Our object is to 
 unite ourselves with the patriotic band who are 
 becoming more numerous every day, who, ir- 
 respective of party, are determined to rescue 
 LABOR in this country from the unjust and 
 tyrannous domination of capital,’ and to obtain 
 for it at all hazards only that fair play which is 
 all it stands in need of, to enable it to work out 
 its own deliverance. 
 
 In our systems of political economy the terms 
 WEALTH, CAPITAL, MONEY, RICHES, GOLD and 
 
10 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OP WEALTH. 
 
 SILVER, CASH and CURRENCY, are all indiscri- 
 minately employed, without distinct or precise 
 ideas being attached to them. In the same way, 
 the terms value and price are confounded 
 with one another; and, in like manner, the terms 
 STANDARD OP VALUE, and MEASURE OP 
 VALUE are also confounded, although their re- 
 spective meanings are really very different. 
 
 It would be difficult to estimate the mischief 
 which has resulted from this indiscriminate use 
 of these terms. The confounding the idea of 
 wealth with money, and money with gold and 
 silver, or the ‘‘precious metals,” as they are 
 called, has not only made the subject of money 
 complex and difficult to be understood, and has 
 purposely kept it a mystery or craft by which 
 selfish and designing men “have their wealth,” 
 but it has led to the establishment of a false 
 mercantile system, which has retarded the pro- 
 gress of nations, and served more to keep man- 
 kind in bondage than any species of despotism 
 ever devised. It is this confounding of wealth 
 with money, and money with gold and silver, 
 that St. Paul denounces, when he says, and 
 says so truly, “ The love of money is the root of 
 all evil.” 
 
 It will be our special business then to attempt 
 to disentangle all this confusion ; to assign precise 
 ideas to these important terms in the science of po- 
 litical economy, by defining them clearly and in- 
 
INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 11 
 
 telligibly . F or this purpose we shall accordingly 
 arrange our subject under the following heads, 
 and inquire — 
 
 1st. What is WEALTH or CAPITAL ? 
 
 2nd. What is value, as contradistinguished 
 from PRICE ? and what the standard of value, 
 as contradistinguished from the MEASURE of 
 VALUE ? 
 
 3rd. What is money or currency ? 
 
 4th. Banks and banking, and the mone- 
 tary SYSTEM of ENGLAND. 
 
 5th. Fixed price of gold. Sir Robert 
 Peel’s legislation of 1819, and measures of 1844 
 and 1845. Cause of low prices. Low prices 
 incompatible with high taxation. Extension 
 of foreign trade, under our present monetary sys- 
 tem, an injury instead of a benefit ; cause of 
 panics and stagnations of trade, and impoverish- 
 ment of the working classes. 
 
 6th. Remedy. Let gold be liberated from 
 its fixed price ; let the trade in money be free. 
 Concurrently with repeal of the Corn Laws, 
 repeal the Money Laws. 
 
12 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHAT IS WEALTH OR CAPITAL ? 
 
 In ordinary discourse tlie terms wealth and 
 capital are confounded with the terms money 
 and CURRENCY. But they are very different in 
 their true meaning. Real capital is one thing 
 - — Artificial , conventional , or representative capi- 
 tal is another thing. The indiscriminate use, 
 however, of these terms has created a world of 
 mischief ; and the confusion of ideas which it has 
 produced lies at the root of all the evils society 
 is now enduring* 
 
 * The following definitions of the term wealth are given 
 by different political economists: — 
 
 Wealth. — 44 All that man desires.” Lord Lauderdale . 
 
 44 Those material objects which are necessary, useful, or 
 agreeable.” Mr. Malthus. 
 
 44 That portion of the results of land and labor which are 
 capable of being accumulated .” Adam Smith. 
 
 4 4 Those material products which have exchangeable value.” 
 Mr. M‘Culloch. 
 
 44 Articles which possess utility, and are produced by some 
 portion of voluntary effort.” Colonel Torrens. 
 
 44 It were well if the ambiguities of this word had done no 
 more than puzzle philosophers. One of them gave birth to 
 the mercantile system. In common language, to get rich is 
 to get money; to diminish in fortune is to lose money; a 
 rich man is said to have a great deal of money, a poor man 
 very little ; and the terms wealth and money , in short, are 
 employed as synonymous. In consequence of these popular 
 notions (to use the words of Adam Smith) all different na- 
 tions of Europe have studied every means of accumulating 
 gold and silver in their respective countries. This they have 
 attempted by prohibiting the exportation of money [gold], 
 and imposing restrictions on the importation of other com- 
 modities, in the hope of producing what is called a favour- 
 
WEALTH DEFINED. 
 
 13 
 
 The term wealth has two meanings — the 
 one moral — the other material . 
 
 The Moral is the true and original Saxon 
 meaning of the term, and signifies simply weal 
 or wellbeing. All therefore who are blessed 
 with health of body and of mind — who are able 
 and willing to work, whatever may be their rank 
 or condition, and who are qualified to perform 
 the various individual and relative duties of life 
 — in short, to exert and enjoy the capacities of 
 their nature in society, as the great Author of 
 their being intended, are wealthy in the best 
 sense of the term. 
 
 able balance of trade ; that is, a trade in which the imports 
 being always of less value than the exports, the difference is 
 paid in money [gold] : a conduct as wise as that of a trades- 
 man who should part with his goods only for money, and, 
 instead of employing their price in paying his workmen or 
 renewing his stock, should keep it for ever in his till. The 
 attempt to force such a trade has been as vain as the trade, 
 could it have been obtained, would have been mischievous* 
 But the results have been fraud , punishment , and poverty at 
 home , and discord and war without » It has made nations 
 consider the wealth of their customers a source of loss instead 
 of profit, and an advantageous market a curse instead of a 
 blessing. By inducing them to refuse to profit by the peculiar 
 advantages in climate, soil or industry possessed by their 
 neighbours, it has forced them in a great measure to give up 
 their own. It has for centuries done more , and perhaps for 
 centuries to come will do more , to retard the improvement of 
 Europe than all other causes put together”— Blackwood’s 
 Magazine. 
 
 It is remarkable that the above eloquent writer has him- 
 self fallen into one of those very ambiguities which he finds 
 fault with. He talks of restrictions on the exportation of 
 “money,” and of the balance in trade being paid in “money.” 
 But he should have said “ gold.” It is evident he does not 
 understand the true nature of money, and the distinction 
 betwixt its real and symbolic character. 
 
14 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 In its Material interpretation, the term signi- 
 fies simply the result or acquirements of LABOR, 
 which are expressed also by the terms property 
 or riches, or the ownership of lands, houses, 
 ships, live and dead stock, raw produce, manu- 
 factured goods, food, clothing, furniture, etc. ; also 
 gold, copper, iron, tin, and other metals and 
 minerals; in short, material substances of what- 
 ever description, if useful or desirable, and capa- 
 ble of being valued or exchanged, either by 
 direct barter, or indirectly, through the medium 
 of money ; such money, if consisting of gold and 
 silver, or copper, whether coined or uncoined, 
 according to its intrinsic value , and, therefore, 
 real money, being included in the term. Ac- 
 cordingly, there is no distinction betwixt such 
 money and real capital of every other description. 
 Indeed, the derivation of the term shows this, 
 for the Latin word cap tale* which signifies cattle, 
 is synonymous with pecunia , derived from pecus. 
 The term chattels , meaning in legal phraseology 
 personal or moveable property, is from the same 
 root, captale. In the Anglo-Saxon, ceap is 
 used in the two senses of cattle and chattels , 
 and although this word is now obsolete, the 
 meaning is retained in the term chapman , a 
 dealer in live and dead stock. Stock , capital 
 
 stock , it is unnecessary to mention, denotes aQcu- 
 
 * Catallum — idem quod cnpitale. Bona omnia quag in 
 peeudibns sunt. Ex capitale format a vox captale . et ex cap- 
 talc catallum. G allico — C ha tel et catel. 
 
WEALTH DEFINED. 
 
 15 
 
 mutation , and is applicable to whatever, being 
 superfluous to our current wants, is stored up 
 for future use, or is applied in the production of 
 more wealth.* 
 
 The terms wealth and capital, as above 
 defined, are accordingly synonymous, with this ex- 
 ception, that the term capital does not admit of the 
 moral interpretation which the word wealth does. 
 
 It may be said, we have nothing to do with 
 the moral interpretation of the term in a treatise 
 of this kind; and, strictly speaking, we have 
 not, for the moral elements of wealth cannot be 
 reduced to any precise standard of value, or 
 measured and exchanged : still, it is impossible to 
 deny, that, in the case of individual wealth, the 
 qualities of knowledge, skill in ones profession 
 or business, integrity, energy, and enterprise, and 
 other moral qualities, are valuable, morally speak- 
 ing, and that they often, and rightly so, form the 
 foundation of CREDIT — that mighty moral power, 
 which, when properly organized, will do more for 
 the emancipation of industry, and the regeneration 
 of society, than all the gold and silver, or other 
 precious metals that ever were, or ever will be, 
 dug from the bowels of the earth. 
 
 In like manner, in the case of national wealth, 
 there are elements, not the result of labor, not 
 capable of being reduced to any standard, and 
 
 * Vide Essay on Money, by John Taylor, p, 12, Samuel 
 Clarke, Pall Mall, 1844. 
 
16 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OP WEALTH. 
 
 not capable of being exchanged ; for instance, 
 climate and soil, rivers, bays, or natural harbours; 
 also, the waste but improveable lands, the 
 woods and forests, mines and minerals, native 
 animals,, and the inhabitants or population of a 
 country, all of which ought to be comprehended 
 in the sum of its national wealth. “ These,” says 
 McCulloch, u are the prime materials of national 
 wealth ;” but neither advantageous situation, sa- 
 lubrity of climate, nor fertility of soil, will con- 
 tribute to national prosperity, unless there be 
 some moral power to call forth the energies, 
 and excite the genius, and give perseverance and 
 activity to the industry, of its inhabitants.* 
 
 * “Are there not countries blessed with every natural 
 advantage, where it may be said— 
 
 ‘ All bat the spirit of man is divine,’ 
 
 and where, but for the want of this moral power, the people 
 are sunk in ignorance and wretchedness ; and all the prodi- 
 galities of nature and capabilities of improvement with which 
 the land is blessed are wholly lost ? The world actually 
 teems with all the materials of wealth, for the sustenance, com- 
 fort, and enjoyment of man. But what God makes, man 
 mars; and it is lamentable to observe, even in countries within 
 the circle of European civilisation, to what extent false systems 
 of religion, and fallacious views as to public polity, and 
 jealousies, and evil passions, obstruct the development of the 
 energies of the people, and doom them to poverty when they 
 might be living in the enjoyment of abundance and comfort* 
 Ireland may be taken as an illustration of this — also Spain. 
 The cry is, that Ireland wants Capital. But it is blessed 
 with natural Capital beyond any other country in Europe. 
 What it wants is not Capital, but enlightened moral power, 
 to call forth the energies of the people and make them turn 
 the natural advantages of the country to account. Signs 
 of the awakening of this moral power are already visible 
 in Ireland, and notwithstanding all the factious political 
 agitation with which the land is convulsed, true patri- 
 otism is at work founding those institutions which are 
 
WEALTH DEFINED. 
 
 17 
 
 Land and labor are the elements of all 
 
 MATERIAL WEALTH, 01 REAL CAPITAL — GOLD 
 and silver included. Political economy, how- 
 ever, inculcates this dogma, that land, labor, 
 and capital are the elements of wealth, 
 meaning, by the term capital, not real CAPI- 
 TAL, but artificial capital, in the shape of 
 bank notes representing gold and silver; and, 
 also, that land and labor cannot be combined 
 and made productive, or their products exchanged, 
 without the intervention of such artificial CAPI- 
 TAL. 
 
 In the promulgation of this dogma, it is for- 
 gotten that the land, more especially in combin- 
 ation with the labor and the degree of inherent 
 skill or intelligence possessed by the labor to 
 direct its application and efforts, is real capital as 
 
 calculated to excite the dormant energies of the people, and 
 lead them to accomplish a development of the inexhaustible 
 resources with which their country is so bountifully blessed. 
 If gold and silver alone were Capital, could Spain be said to be 
 in want of it? Has it, or had it, not more Gold and Silver than 
 any other country in Europe? And is it not, so far as respects 
 the condition of the people, either as to physical comforts, or 
 knowledge, or elevation in the scale of civilised life, one of 
 the poorest ? Scotland, on the other hand, is a noble example 
 of a country without gold or silver — of a poor soil, and cold 
 and bleak climate — overcoming its natural disadvantages ; 
 and in virtue of the moral power we have alluded to — its 
 enlightened institutions for the education of its people — its 
 national Church, and its Parish Schools — the moral and in- 
 dustrious habits of its people— their energy and persever- 
 ance— it has attained a high rank among nations; and for 
 the last sixty years has made more progress in civilisation, 
 and in the acquisition of real wealth, than any other country 
 on the face of the earth .” — Former edition of this work , pub- 
 lished at Paisley, in 1837. 
 
 C 
 
IS 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 well as the gold and silver, and is therefore as 
 much entitled to be represented or symbolized 
 by artificial capital as the gold and silver. Why 
 then should not the owners of the land and the 
 labour employ artificial capital of their own for 
 their own purposes? In other words, why should 
 they not coin their own credit, founded on the 
 possession of land and labor and their future pro- 
 ducts, just as the owner of the gold and silver 
 coins his credit, founded on their possession ; 
 although gold and silver have in themselves no 
 powers of production or reproduction, as land 
 and labor, and many other species of real capital 
 have. 
 
 The effect of this dogma is to subject land and 
 labor in tribute, in the name of interest, to the own- 
 ers of that single species of real capital, gold and 
 silver, or of their artificial representative, bank 
 notes, for the use of them in their industrial oper- 
 ations. It may be easily conceived how injurious 
 this tribute has been — how, in the case of waste 
 lands especially, either at home or in the colonies, 
 it has operated in a ruinous manner : for, as waste 
 lands can yield little or no rent, neither can they 
 yield interest ; and therefore it is easy to see how 
 all endeavours to reclaim and convert waste lands 
 by the aid of borrowed artificial capital have 
 proved abortive, and the cultivators have been 
 ruined — it having taken the whole produce raised 
 by their labor to pay the capitalists or lenders 
 
WEALTH DEFINED. 
 
 19 
 
 their interest; but which might all have been 
 saved, had the owners of the land and the labor 
 had the intelligence and mutual confidence — 
 in short, the MORAL power — to invent and 
 employ money of their own, or a commercial 
 currency, representative of their own real capital. 
 
 Another effect is, that a distinct order — the 
 “ monied power” — has been raised up in the 
 state, who, by the monopoly they possess in this 
 artificial capital, not only are invested with an 
 immense authority and influence over all other 
 classes of society, but are enabled to draw to 
 themselves a large share of the produce raised 
 by the skill and labor of the industrious classes; 
 although they do not labor themselves, nor con- 
 tribute in any degree to the creation of real 
 wealth. It is impossible to deny the ascendancy 
 of this class in the country at the present day. 
 The Legislature itself even is subject to its in- 
 fluence. Indeed, in the issuing of symbolic 
 money, monied men or capitalists have usurped 
 the prerogative of the crown ; they have invested 
 themselves with one of the most emphatic func- 
 tions of sovereign authority; and the people, 
 instead of enjoying the advantages of taxation- 
 money, are subjected to the exactions of an 
 unconstitutional monied oligarchy, who exercise 
 their exclusive privileges for their own benefit, 
 and with no regard for the well-being of the 
 people. 
 
 C 2 
 
20 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 It only remains, under this head, to notice the 
 distinction betwixt fixed and floating capital. 
 
 Fixed capital may be said to consist of lands, 
 houses, and other permanent kinds of property 
 which do not reproduce themselves, but yield a 
 certain return to their owner for their usufruct. 
 
 Capital is said to be floating when it is sym- 
 bolized and embarked in trade, in the production 
 of additional wealth, exposed to all the risks and 
 contingencies of trade ; in which case, a larger 
 return or profit is looked for than in the case of 
 fixed capital. 
 
21 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHAT IS VALUE AS CONTRADISTINGUISHED 
 FROM PRICE, AND WHAT THE STAN- 
 DARD OF VALUE, AS CONTRADISTIN- 
 GUISHED FROM THE MEASURE OF 
 VALUE? 
 
 All trade is Barter, or the exchange of one 
 commodity for another commodity of equal 
 value. Barter may be direct or indirect; 
 direct when value is given for value, indirect when 
 a medium, or commonly received or acknowledged 
 symbol or token merely of value, is employed in 
 effecting the transfer. 
 
 What constitutes value? Simply the labor 
 employed in the production or creation of any 
 commodity. Of what avail or value is it ? What 
 is its worth? What will it exchange for? Some 
 other commodity, the production of which has 
 taken an equal quantity or amount of labor. 
 
 Thus the experience of several generations 
 bye-past proves, that it takes, on an average, the 
 same quantity of labor to produce one ounce of 
 gold, fifteen ounces of silver, and two quarters 
 and a half or twenty bushels of wheat ; all of 
 which commodities are therefore equal values, 
 though differing in kind, quantity, and denomi- 
 nation ; and the same rule holds as to all other 
 commodities. 
 
22 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OP WEALTH. 
 
 The essence of value then is labor. But as 
 labor must be fed, and as corn is the staple 
 article of food in most, if not all countries, labor, 
 which is “ an abstract notion”* has come to be 
 itself estimated in this essential article of food 
 required for its support, it being a palpable and 
 substantive material article, about which there 
 can be no dispute. 
 
 With respect to PRICE as contradistinguished 
 from value, it is simply the expression of ex- 
 changeable or commercial value in MONEY. It 
 bears the same affinity to value as quantity 
 does to quality ; indeed the meaning of the 
 terms is identical. Number may or may not 
 indicate weight. Length does not express so- 
 lidity. Two are equal to two in numbers, but one 
 may be equal to two in quality. A pipe or stick 
 of gold may measure twenty inches in length, 
 but it may contain only the same quantity of 
 gold as a sovereign , and therefore will be equal 
 in quality or value to that sovereign : it may be 
 extended to twenty-five or thirty inches ; its 
 length is increased, but its value is nowise altered. 
 
 So the money denomination or price of gold 
 may be increased or appreciated; but its value 
 or quality will remain the same. This subject 
 will be further illustrated when we come to treat 
 of money and currency. 
 
 * Wealth of Nations, vol.i., p. 56. 
 
VALUE DEFINED. 
 
 23 
 
 The Author of the Wealth of Nations, the 
 Earl of Lauderdale, Sir William Petty, Ricardo, 
 and other political economists, have all disputed 
 concerning the standard of value and 
 measure OF value, which terms they have used 
 indiscriminately; some making both or either to 
 consist in labor, some in com, some in gold, and 
 some coming to the conclusion that there is no 
 such thing as a standard or common measure of 
 value at all. Dr. Smith adopts money as the 
 practical standard “because every particular com- 
 modity is more frequently exchanged for money 
 than for any other commodity, the butcher sel- 
 dom carrying his beef or mutton to the baker or 
 brewer, to exchange them for bread or beer, but 
 carrying them to the market, where he exchanges 
 them for money , which he afterwards exchanges 
 for bread and beer.”* But in this illustration, 
 while Dr. Smith says nothing of the nature or 
 kind of money employed, whether real, or artificial , 
 or symbolical money, he allows it is but an in- 
 termediate instrument to obtain something else. 
 Is it necessary however for the exchange ? Sup- 
 pose there were no money to be had, the beef 
 and the mutton, the bread and the beer, would 
 'Still be there to be exchanged, according to the 
 values of each, of which the money would be 
 but the symbol or representative. In such a case, 
 
 ^ Wealth of Nations, vol. i. p. 56. 
 
24 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 it is clear, money cannot be the standard , because 
 it may be dispensed with, and because the quan- 
 tity of bread or beer given for the beef is the 
 same, whether money enter into the calculation 
 or not. 
 
 But while Dr. Smith makes money practically 
 the standard, he at the same time allows that 
 theoretically 4 4 corn is a better measure than 
 silver , because, from century to century, equal 
 quantities of corn command the same quantity of 
 labor, more nearly than equal quantities of 
 silver and in the following extracts he 
 affirms the pre-eminence of corn still more 
 extensively: 44 Equal quantities of labor will at 
 distant times be purchased more nearly with 
 equal quantities of corn , the subsistence of the 
 labourer, than with equal quantities of gold and 
 silver, or perhaps of any other commodity.” f 
 4 4 We may rest assured that equal quantities of 
 corn will, in every state of society, in every stage of 
 improvement, more nearly represent, or be equiva- 
 lent to, equal quantities of labor, than equal quan- 
 tities of any other part of the produce of land. 
 Corn, accordingly, it has already been observed, 
 is, in all the different stages of wealth and im- 
 provement, a more accurate measure of value 
 than any other commodity or set of com- 
 modities.’^ 44 The nature of things has stamped 
 
 * Wealth of Nations, vol. i. p. 64 . f Ibid. vol. i. p. 61 . 
 
 X Ibid. p. 310. 
 
VALUE DEFINED. 
 
 25 
 
 on corn a real value , which cannot be altered by 
 altering merely its MONEY PRICE.”* 
 
 No terms could go beyond these in declaring 
 the paramount fitness of corn to be the standard 
 of value. 
 
 It is singular that Dr. Smith should, notwith- 
 standing, adopt gold and silver as the “ practical ” 
 standard. Why should this be the case? “In 
 th e first place, have they,” says Mr. John Taylor, 
 “ any real value stamped on them by the nature 
 of things? It would be absurd to say they have: 
 for if they were swept away at once from the 
 earth, the welfare of mankind would in no degree 
 be impaired by their loss. We should have the 
 same food, the same clothing, and probably ten 
 times more happiness, if they were all at the 
 bottom of the sea, provided that with them 4 the 
 love of money, the root of all evil,’ were engulfed. 
 Secondly , whence do they derive any value they 
 have? Supposing them equally desirable, the only 
 reason why gold is more valuable than silver is 
 that it costs more corn : the same quantity of corn 
 which is consumed in obtaining one ounce of 
 gold is consumed in obtaining fifteen ounces of 
 silver ; therefore gold is fifteen times more 
 valuable than silver.” 44 Gold,” says Mr. Eicardo, 
 44 is fifteen times dearer than silver, not because 
 the supply of silver is fifteen times greater than 
 that of gold, but solely because fifteen times the 
 * Wealth of Nations, p. 54. 
 
26 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 quantity of labor is necessary to procure a given 
 quantity of it.”* “ Gold,” says Mr.M^ulloch, “is 
 not more valuable than iron or lead or tin, be- 
 cause of its greater brilliancy, durability, or duc- 
 tility, but simply because an infinitely greater 
 outlay of capital and labor is required to pro- 
 duce a given quantity of gold than is required 
 to produce the same quantity of either of these 
 metals.”! “This is but to say, that the precious 
 metals, instead of having a natural value, like 
 corn, are gifted with the degree of value which 
 they possess, by representing that quantity of corn 
 which is the standard of their acquisition.”! 
 
 Just then, as in the diurnal revolutions of the 
 earth round the sun the natural standard of time 
 is to be found, and in the space occupied by so 
 many cubic inches of distilled water our imperial 
 standards of weight and capacity are to be found ; 
 so, in like manner, in corn, “ the staff of life,” 
 has nature established the most unerring and 
 uniform standard of value for the various com- 
 modities and articles of exchange amongst men. 
 
 The various reasons for the adoption of corn 
 as the true standard of value are set forth by 
 Mr. Taylor in the following propositions: — 
 
 1 . Corn is emphatically the staff of life. 
 
 2. It is universally met with wherever society 
 
 is found. 
 
 * Political Economy, p 421. 
 t Notes to Wealth of Nations, vol. ii. p. 203. 
 j The Standard and Measure of Value, p. 24. 
 
VALUE DEFINED. 
 
 27 
 
 3. It cannot be obtained without labor , which 
 
 gives it a commercial value. 
 
 4. No other commodity obtainable by labor 
 
 can be obtained without the consumption 
 of this chief necessary of life. 
 
 5. Consequently, all other commodities, if they 
 
 are valued in proportion to their cost , 
 must be valued by the quantity of corn 
 consumed in their production. 
 
 6. Corn is, therefore, the practical standard of 
 
 value for all other commodities. 
 
 7. It is capable of increase , and does increase 
 
 in quantity as the wants and the numbers 
 of mankind call for its increase. 
 
 8. It is incapable of permanent superabundance, 
 
 since it is of a perishable nature ; and men 
 are so far governed by the law of common 
 sense that they will not raise a greater 
 supply of corn year by year than there is a 
 demand for. 
 
 9. Though from year to year it is liable to 
 
 great fluctuations, yet as from century to 
 century , and for shorter periods on the 
 average, it is an article of uniform value, it 
 is the fittest thing to be the standard of 
 value of all things. 
 
 We come now to treat of the MEASURE of 
 value, as contradistinguished from the STANDARD 
 of value. It has been seen that Dr. Adam Smith 
 and other political economists confounded these 
 
28 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OP WEALTH. 
 
 two terms. It was reserved for the philosophic 
 mind of Mr. John Taylor to analyze the two 
 terms, and to reveal the dreadful fallacy which 
 lurks under their indiscriminate use. 
 
 Mr. Taylor defines a measure to be “ a rule of 
 'proportion connecting two extremes ,” which points 
 are, with reference to the measure, its standard — 
 that with w r hich it is always required to be in 
 exact conformity, and by which it may be tested 
 whenever there is a doubt of its conformity. 
 
 The space occupied by lOlbs. of distilled water, 
 at the temperature of 62° Fahrenheit, constitutes 
 now the imperial standard gallon, our standard of 
 capacity; and from this are constructed now all 
 the gallons and other measures of capacity made 
 use of in this country for practical purposes. 
 From the weight of a cubic inch of distilled 
 water the pound troy may be generated: the 
 cubic inch of water is in this case our standard of 
 weight; and the pound itself, with all its sub- 
 divisions and aggregations, is our measure of 
 weight . It was the same under the old system. 
 
 As three barleycorns were the standard of length, 
 the inches, feet, and yard formed from it were 
 the measures of length. As thirty-two grains of 
 wheat were the standard of weight, so the pound, 
 ounces, and pennyweights which it gave rise to 
 were the measures of weight . A pound weight 
 of wheat or wine was declared to be a standard 
 pint of each. This was then our standard of 
 
VALUE DEFINED. 
 
 29 
 
 capacity, from which gallons, bushels, quarters, 
 barrels, hogsheads, tuns, and all other measures 
 of capacity were formed. 
 
 The distinction holds equally good as to time 
 and its subdivisions. The natural day, from 
 noon to noon, is the standard of time: hours, 
 minutes, and seconds are the several measures of 
 time. 
 
 Another and a striking illustration of the 
 difference between a standard and a measure is 
 furnished by the thermometer , the well-known 
 measurer of heat. The points at which water 
 boils and freezes constitute the standard , and 
 mercury or spirit of wine expanding or contract- 
 ing, as it receives or loses heat, the measure — 
 objects as distinct in their nature as possible. 
 
 From these examples it will appear, that, while 
 the standard is fixed in nature , the measure may 
 be, and generally is, an artificial arrangement, 
 contrived so as most conveniently to bring the 
 virtues of the standard into practical operation. 
 
 We have seen, that, as a standard of value , corn 
 is perfect; but, as a measure of value , it is de- 
 ficient; because, though it may not vary from 
 century to century, nor from generation to 
 generation, nor from one period of ten years to 
 another, taking either the quantity or quality on 
 an average; yet, from year to year, it is subject to 
 great changes both in quantity and quality, and 
 is therefore an imperfect measure of value. 
 
30 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 But the same authorities which have been 
 adduced in favour of corn as a standard , are 
 equally decisive in favour of gold and silver as a 
 measure of value, although the essential distinc- 
 tion in their nature was not observed by them. 
 “ The value of silver, though it varies greatly 
 from century to century, seldom varies from year 
 to year, but frequently continues the same, or 
 nearly so, for half a century or a century together. 
 The ordinary or average money price of corn , 
 therefore, may, during so long a period, continue 
 the same or nearly the same; and along with it, 
 the money price of labor , provided at least society 
 continues, in other respects, in the same or nearly 
 the same condition. In the mean time, the tem- 
 porary and occasional price of corn may frequently 
 he double one year of what it was the year before, 
 or fluctuate, for example, from 2 5s. to 50s. the 
 quarter.”* “ From century to century corn is a 
 better measure than silver , because from century 
 to century equal quantities of corn will command 
 the same quantity of labour more nearly than 
 equal quantities of silver. From year to year , on 
 the contrary, silver is a better measure than corn , 
 because equal quantities of it will more nearly 
 command the same quantity of labor. ”f 
 
 This contrast of the different qualities of corn 
 and silver is so remarkably strong that one 
 
 * Wealth of Nations, vol. i. p. 63. 
 
 f Ibid. vol. i. p. 64. 
 
VALUE DEFINED. 
 
 31 
 
 wonders Dr. Smith did not perceive, in the oppo- 
 site uses of which each was capable, a possibility 
 of combining them, so as to neutralize their de- 
 fects, and form a perfect whole. But this seems 
 not to have occurred to him. The obvious in- 
 conveniences of corn as money , and the evident 
 advantages of gold and silver for that purpose, 
 gave them so decided a preponderance that he 
 seems not to have suspected there was any other 
 course left than to take the latter, not only as the 
 measure , but as the standard of value also. And 
 Mr. McCulloch, Dr. Smith’s commentator, con- 
 firms the same mistaken view of the subject, for 
 he says: “ Though the precious metals fall very 
 short of being a perfect standard , they certainly 
 are the best of any that have been hitherto sug- 
 gested.”* 
 
 To what but a confusion of ideas regarding the 
 standard and the measure of value, and ignorance 
 of their perfectly distinct and separate characters, 
 are we to attribute a declaration so positive as 
 this, at direct variance with the several declara- 
 tions of Dr. Smith himself (which we have before 
 quoted) that corn is the true and natural standard 
 of value, and not gold and silver? 
 
 Mr. John Taylor thus sums up the advantages 
 of the precious metals, and the reasons for their 
 adoption as measures of value; just as we have 
 
 * Vol. iv. p. 214. 
 
32 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 before shown, he enumerates the reasons for 
 adopting corn as the standard of value. 
 
 1. They cannot suddenly diminish in quantity , 
 
 and thereby as suddenly increase in value. 
 
 2. They cannot suddenly increase in quantity, 
 
 and so become diminished in value. 
 
 3. They are highly condensed expressions ol 
 
 value, containing great commercial value 
 in little bulk. 
 
 4. They are less subject to injury from time, 
 
 or to deterioration from wear and tear, or 
 from disuse or neglect, than any other 
 commodities. 
 
 5. They are everywhere in request, and are 
 
 likely to continue so. 
 
 6. They are capable of being stamped, so as to 
 
 convey the warrant of their purity and 
 weight ; which saves the trouble of further 
 proof. 
 
 7. They are infinitely subdivisible. 
 
 8 . There is no conceivable portion of the 
 
 standard of value , corn, which the measure 
 of value in these metals cannot exactly 
 represent. 
 
33 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WHAT IS MONEY OR CURRENCY? 
 
 Money is of three kinds. 1st, that which 
 has real or intrinsic value. 2ndly, that which 
 has only a symbolic or representative value. 
 3rdly, that which combines both its real and 
 symbolic characters. 
 
 Money of the First kind is the same as real 
 . wealth or capital. Gold, silver, or copper, 
 of full weight, or real or intrinsic value, is the 
 same whether coined or uncoined ; for, if coined, 
 it passes for no more than its weight, and is still 
 just a bit of bullion, or piece of metal, whose value 
 is dependant on the same laws as determine and 
 regulate the value of all other commodities. 
 Whenever money of this kind is employed, the 
 transaction resolves itself into one of direct barter, 
 or exchange of value for value. Not merely gold 
 and silver, but iron, tin , brass, and oxen, and slaves 
 or “living money,” and cloths, rock-salt, cocoa, 
 etc., have all been used as money, as is proved 
 by Sacred Writ, and by the history of various 
 nations and tribes. Beaver skins form the 
 measure of exchange among the North Ame- 
 rican Indians ; and tobacco is employed to a great 
 extent, as a measure of exchange, among the New 
 Zealanders at the present day. Of real money, or 
 capital, there is no lack in England. England 
 D 
 
34 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH, 
 
 abounds in it. Indeed, of this species of MONEY 
 or wealth or CAPITAL (for all these terms in 
 this real sense are synonymous), there is a super- 
 fluity. And yet, in the midst of this superabun- 
 dance, the class of industrious small farmers and 
 tradesmen, all the active producers of wealth, that 
 is to say, three fourths of the people, including 
 wives and children, are straitened in their circum- 
 stances, or are pining in poverty. To use the 
 words of DTsraeli, the labouring people of Eng- 
 land, with reference to the wealth which sur- 
 rounds them, u are the hardest worked, the worst 
 fed, and the most abject and degraded people on 
 the face of the earth.” What a stigma on our 
 boasted Civilization and Christianity ! Whence is 
 this anomaly? Evidently not from the existence 
 of real wealth ,or power of creating it. Whence 
 then but from its imperfect distribution ? 
 
 In the ancient tallies of the Exchequer, and in 
 the modern Exchequer Bills, we have specimens 
 of the Second description of money, viz. symbolic 
 or representative MONEY. The most worthless 
 material may be made use of for the purpose, if 
 properly authenticated, or stamped, or subscribed, 
 so as to acquit the holder of the sum it may bear, 
 whatever may be the amount. Such money is just 
 the means which government furnishes, or ought to 
 furnish , to the people, wherewith to pay their taxes. 
 It is properly called Taxation or Tribute Money. 
 All supplies, services, etc., are first acknowledged 
 
CURRENCY DEFINED. 
 
 35 
 
 or paid by government in this money, and then 
 the money is received back in payment of the 
 taxes. So long as the issue does not exceed, 
 but is limited to the amount of the annual taxa- 
 tion, it is impossible such money can ever become 
 depreciated. Such money is the instrument 
 which works the relation betwixt the sovereign 
 and the subject, betwixt the governor and the 
 governed, betwixt the tax-receiver and the tax- 
 payer; and, by means of it, a system of effec- 
 tive co-operation might be kept up, and all 
 parts of the social machine be kept in beautiful 
 harmony. 
 
 The true character of money, then , is that it should 
 be purely symbolical or representative ; a mere token 
 or symbol of value, and conventional medium of 
 interchange amongst the members of a commu- 
 nity, of the various products of their industry, 
 or commodities necessary for the supply of their 
 several wants and desires, whether necessities , 
 comforts , or luxuries; the values of such commo- 
 dities, expressed in such symbols, being computed 
 in gold as the measure of value. Indeed, the 
 derivation of the word from the Latin verb, 
 moneo % , to advise, indicates the true meaning of 
 the word MONEY. Its definition, in the words ot 
 Mr. John Taylor, is “ a token of value received, 
 
 * Monet a from Moneo. The Saxon word Monet — the 
 German Muntz — the French Monnaie — the Italian Moneta — 
 and the Spanish Moneda — are all from the same root. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 which acquits the holder of an obligation to 
 pay a certain quantity of real money, represented 
 by the token.” 
 
 The Third kind of money is that which 
 is partly real and partly symbolic . Gold and 
 silver, when coined, are real money to the 
 extent of their respective weights. They are 
 symbolic , when, in virtue of the royal u image and 
 superscription” which they bear, or the authority 
 of government, in whose name they have been 
 issued, they pass current for a higher denomina- 
 tion or price than their real value. 
 
 Of this description of money are our silver 
 coins, which are merely tokens or counters, for 
 measuring the fractional parts of the pound 
 sterling, and our copper coins, which answer the 
 same purpose for the fractional parts of our silver 
 coins. In all internal transactions below 40^. 
 silver coins will pass current for their nominal 
 value. But for larger sums they are not a legal 
 tender; and they can be refused, except according 
 to their weight or real value only. 
 
 It is needless to observe, that if coined of full 
 weight or value, the royal image or superscrip- 
 tion is of no use. The coins, in that case, are just 
 so many pieces of metal or bullion, and are as 
 valuable without as with the stamp of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 But when coined of less than full weight, 
 and therefore money in the proper sense of 
 
CURRENCY DEFINED. 
 
 37 
 
 tlie word, they form, along with the purely 
 symbolical money of the second description, the 
 government money, or u money of the realm f 
 or, in other words, u the legal lender money ’ of 
 the country. 
 
 The word CURRENCY signifies that legal tender 
 money which passes current as the representative 
 of a value which it does not really possess; and 
 is either wholly symbolic, as in the case of paper 
 money, such as Exchequer bills, or partially so, 
 as in the case of coins bearing a higher denomi- 
 nation than their real value. 
 
 But there is another kind of currency, dis- 
 tinct from the legal tender money, or money of 
 the realm, which consists of obligations be- 
 twixt man and man, to pay certain amounts to 
 each other, in the legal tender money of the 
 country, such as BANK NOTES, BILLS OF EX- 
 CHANGE, and other MERCANTILE or COM- 
 MERCIAL obligations, which are merely so 
 many acknowledgments of debt, and with 
 which goverment has no earthly right to in- 
 terfere, any more than it has to interfere 
 and prevent one man from borrowing from 
 another man, or obtaining goods on credit from 
 another man, which is just another species of 
 borrowing. This species of currency will regulate 
 itself, far better than any act or acts of parliament 
 which could possibly be framed for the purpose. 
 The employment of this species of currency, 
 
38 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 implies great intelligence and integrity, mutual 
 faith and confidence, among the members of the 
 community by whom it is exercised; also the 
 establishment of courts of law, and an effective 
 and powerful executive government, to enforce 
 fulfilment of the obligations : in short, it is only 
 in a highly educated and civilized state of 
 society that such credit, or commercial currency, 
 can be employed with the most beneficial con- 
 sequences. 
 
 The foregoing distinction shows us wherein 
 real money differs from symbolic money, and 
 government currency, or money of the realm, 
 from commercial currency.* 
 
 The distinction is identical with that betwixt 
 real wealth or capital, and artificial or 
 representative wealth or capital ; the latter 
 being, in fact, neither more nor less than ac- 
 knowledgments or claims of debt against the real 
 wealth already created, and the labor of the 
 country, in its power to create further additional 
 wealth. 
 
 Having given the foregoing definitions of 
 MONEY and CURRENCY, we come now to treat of^ 
 BANKS and banking, and the present monetary 
 
 * Sir Robert Peel did not see these distinctions, when, in 
 his speech of 7th May, 1844, in introducing the Bank Char- 
 ter Act, he gave this definition of money, “ I mean by money , 
 the coin of the realm , or I mean promissory notes , payable to 
 the bearer on demanding the coin of the realm.” 
 
CURRENCY DEFINED. 
 
 39 
 
 system of England; and in the course of our 
 observations thereon, we will see how the true 
 theory of money has been departed from, and 
 how it happens, that, under our present defective 
 money system, u capital,” as it is called, tyran- 
 nizes over labor, and the great body of the 
 people are, in consequence, sunk in poverty and 
 degradation. 
 
40 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 BANKS AND BANKING, AND THE MONETARY 
 SYSTEM OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Although the government of England issues 
 Exchequer hills to the amount of about thirty 
 millions annually, and although these are avail- 
 able u in aid ” of government, or are payable in 
 taxes, according to the true theory of money, 
 still they are divested of that character by their 
 being made to bear interest, and are not by law 
 the legal tender money , or money of the realm. 
 
 The only legal tender money , according to the 
 present law of England, is gold sovereigns of 
 5 dwts. and 3 grs. each in weight , and of the 
 fixed price of 20 s. each, or at the rate of 77 s. lOJrf. 
 per ounce. 
 
 This price is fixed by law, under the idea or 
 pretence that “ an invariable standard of value” 
 
BANKING SYSTEM. 
 
 41 
 
 is thereby secured. And it is enacted that the 
 whole BANK NOTE CIRCULATION, or CIRCU- 
 LATING MEDIUM, Or CREDIT CURRENCY of the 
 country, which is payable on demand, if for 
 sums greater than 40s., shall be payable in 
 SOVEREIGNS of 5 dwts. and 3 grs., and at the 
 price of 20s. each.* That is, that the pound, or 
 unit of account, shall at all times, and in all 
 circumstances, represent, measure, or be equiva- 
 lent to, 5 dwts. and 3 grs. of gold. 
 
 We shall exhibit in a subsequent chapter the 
 pernicious consequences of the ignorance, folly, 
 or wickedness in which such a regulation has 
 originated. But a summary review of the past 
 history of money in England is necessary to a 
 proper understanding of our present monetary 
 system. 
 
 The following table of the weight and value of 
 the principal gold and silver coins from the time 
 of the Conqueror, extracted from Mr. Taylor’s 
 chronology of English money, appended to 
 “ The Labourer’s Protection the Nation’s Ke- 
 rn edy,”f will furnish at a glance a historical 
 account of the variations in weight and value of 
 our metallic money, or reductions in the standard, 
 down to the present period. 
 
 * No bank notes for sums below 5 1 . can be issued in Eng- 
 land. In Scotland and Ireland, bank notes can be issued for 
 sums of 1/. and upwards, 
 f Vide “ Currency Investigated.” 
 
42 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 TABLE OF THE WEIGHT AND VALUE OF THE 
 PRINCIPAL COINS OF ENGLAND FROM THE 
 CONQUEST. 
 
 Years. 
 
 Principal Coin. 
 
 Value. 
 
 Weight. 
 
 Weight 
 of £1. 
 
 Present 
 
 Value. 
 
 Weight 
 of Is. 
 
 Present 
 
 Value. 
 
 1066 
 
 Silver Penny 
 
 s. 
 
 0 
 
 d. 
 
 grs. 
 
 22A 
 
 grs. 
 
 540 
 
 £ 
 
 4 
 
 «v. 
 
 16 
 
 d. 
 
 0 
 
 grs. 
 
 270 
 
 s. d. 
 4 9$ 
 
 1257 
 
 Gold Pennv 
 
 1 
 
 8 
 
 45 
 
 540 
 
 4 
 
 16 
 
 0 
 
 270 
 
 4 9$ 
 
 1345 
 
 Gold Noble 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 138$ 
 
 414£ 
 
 3 
 
 12 
 
 10 
 
 240 
 
 3 7* 
 
 1347 
 
 — 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 128$ 
 
 385J 
 
 3 
 
 8 
 
 6 
 
 240 
 
 3 5 
 
 1352 
 
 — 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 120 
 
 360 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 9 
 
 216 
 
 3 2 
 
 1412 
 
 — 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 108 
 
 324 
 
 3 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 180 
 
 3 0 
 
 1465 
 
 Gold Rial 
 
 10 
 
 0 
 
 120 
 
 240 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 144 
 
 2 1$ 
 
 1485 
 
 Sovereign 
 
 20 
 
 0 
 
 240 
 
 240 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 144 
 
 2 1$ 
 
 1527 
 
 Gold Crown 
 
 5 
 
 0 
 
 57i 
 
 229 
 
 l 
 
 18 
 
 2 
 
 127£ 
 
 1 11 
 
 1545 
 
 Sovereign 
 
 20 
 
 0 
 
 192 
 
 192 
 
 1 
 
 12 
 
 0 
 
 120 
 
 1 7 
 
 1550 
 
 — 
 
 20 
 
 0 
 
 169 
 
 169 
 
 1 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 80 
 
 1 5 
 
 1552 
 
 — 
 
 20 
 
 0 
 
 174 
 
 174 
 
 1 
 
 9 
 
 0 
 
 96 
 
 1 5| 
 
 1601 
 
 
 
 20 
 
 0 
 
 172 
 
 172 
 
 1 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 92f 
 
 92f 
 
 1 5 
 
 1605 
 
 — (Unit) 
 
 20 
 
 0 
 
 155 
 
 155 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 10 
 
 1 3| 
 
 1620 
 
 — (Laurel) 
 
 20 
 
 0 
 
 140 
 
 140 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 92| 
 
 1 2 
 
 1663 
 
 — (Guinea) 
 
 20 
 
 0 
 
 129 
 
 129 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 92| 
 
 1 1 
 
 1734 
 
 Guinea 
 
 21 
 
 0 
 
 129 
 
 123 
 
 1 
 
 0 
 
 6* 
 
 92| 
 
 1 0 
 
 1816 
 
 Sovereign 
 
 20 
 
 0 
 
 123 
 
 123 
 
 1 
 
 0 
 
 6* 
 
 87 i 
 
 1 0 
 
 * So valued, as being estimated at 2d. per grain. 
 
 1066 — At the time of William the Conqueror, the 
 pound sterling , or standard pound, or pound 
 weight of silver , was the pound of account. Our 
 coins were weights, and the silver penny was 
 then exactly a pennyweight. 
 
 1257 — There was no gold coinage till this year, when 
 gold pennies were coined, valued at twenty silver 
 pennies. 
 
 1345 — In this year gold nobles, of 145-J grains, equal 
 to 65 . 8 d., were coined. 
 
 1612 — It was not till 1612 that we had any copper 
 money. The first copper coins issued were 
 farthing tokens. 
 
 1672 — Copper halfpennies were issued in this year. 
 
 1694 — The Bank of England was established this 
 year. 
 
BANKING SYSTEM. 
 
 43 
 
 1696 — Exchequer Bills were issued for sums of 51. 
 and 10Z. 
 
 1699 — Tallies and Exchequer Bills were withdrawn 
 from circulation , and funded. 
 
 1741 — Exchequer Bills ceased to be issued for less 
 than 100Z. 
 
 1797 — The bullion in the Bank of England was only 
 1,086,170Z. ; and on February 26, the Bank 
 suspended cash payments. In March following, 
 notes for 1 Z. were first issued. In the same year, 
 copper pennies were first coined. 
 
 1816 — Bank notes, in relation to gold, were 33|- per 
 cent, depreciated since 1797. In the same year 
 shillings were re-coined at the rate of 66 in the 
 pound troy. 
 
 1817- — Sovereigns first coined of 5 dwts. 3grs., to 
 supersede guineas. 
 
 1819 — Peel’s bill, compelling the Bank to resume 
 cash payments at 77s. lO^eZ., was passed. 
 
 1825 — A great panic in December. Bullion in the 
 Bank reduced below one million. 
 
 1826 — Circulation of notes below 51. prohibited 
 after 1829. Joint Stock Banks allowed to be 
 established with more than six partners. 
 
 1833— Bank of England notes declared legal tenders; 
 and yet, most inconsistently, the Bank itself 
 compelled to pay in gold. 
 
 1844 — The “ Complement” Act passed, restricting 
 all banks in the amount of their issues. A 
 monopoly in the business of banking created. 
 The formation of new banks of issue prohibited. 
 
 1845 — Banks in Scotland and Ireland restricted in 
 
44 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 their issues. Great railway speculation and 
 gambling on the Stock Exchange, and in the 
 share market, to an unprecedented extent. A 
 panic in October and November, notwithstanding 
 Sir Robert Peel declared his monetary legisla- 
 tion of 1844 would prevent all reckless specu- 
 lation, and all panics, in future. 
 
 From the foregoing Table it will be seen, that 
 during the last eight centuries, or 780 years, the 
 standard, or weight of the pound sterling , has 
 gradually diminished, till now it is only about 
 one-fifth of what it was originally, although the 
 denomination has still been retained. Gold, 
 though now 15 T 2 T times more valuable than 
 silver, owing to the discovery of America, and 
 greater supply of silver from the American mines* 
 and other causes, was originally only about ten 
 times more valuable; so that 540 grains of gold 
 were then equal to 5760 grains, or one pound 
 troy weight of silver. Now the equation is 
 384 to 5760. 
 
 It is not our intention to trace out curiously 
 the various immediate causes which led to the 
 diminution of the coins. In some instances 
 intentional fraud may have been the cause. But 
 doubtless the increase of population and trade, 
 the requirements for more money to effect ex- 
 changes, the wear and tear betwixt one reign and 
 another, and an inadequate supply in relation to 
 the demand, were among the principal reasons 
 
BANKING SYSTEM. 
 
 45 
 
 which necessitated a diminution from time to 
 time, so as to make them correspond as aliquot 
 parts with the alteration of the value of gold 
 and silver as commodities.* 
 
 As to the standard purity of the coin (with 
 some cases of exception), it has been better pre~ 
 served in England than in other countries. 
 
 Till 1527, the standard purity of gold was 
 l grain alloy to 96 grains of gold. Since then 
 it has been 8 grains alloy to 96 grains gold. 
 The old standard is called fine gold, the new 
 crown gold. Fine gold is worth 2|rf., crown 
 gold 2d ., per grain. 
 
 From the earliest times the standard of our 
 silver coin has been 3 grains alloy to 40 grains 
 silver. 
 
 The distinction betwixt value and price, or 
 difference betwixt the real and nominal value of 
 money, has mot been regarded in its proper light. 
 From erroneous notions concerning the nature 
 
 * When the pound weight of gold rises in exchangeable 
 value or price , the pound of account, as an aliquot part, ought 
 necessarily to depreciate. For instance, if the pound wejght 
 of bullion should rise to 60/. in the market ; while it is fixed 
 by law at 44/. ; and is coined accordingly into 44 sovereigns, 
 it is right the sovereign should rise in price in a correspond- 
 ing ratio, otherwise its relation as money, or the measure of 
 value, will be effectually destroyed. The appreciation of the 
 sovereign will effect the depreciation of the pound of account, 
 which will now count only a 60th part, in place of a 44th. It 
 is right this should take place, else its relative exchangeable 
 value or purchasing power will not be preserved ; it will be, 
 on the contrary, destroyed, because it will be unduly en- 
 hanced, to the great injury of all debtor interests, who have to 
 pay in such enhanced money. 
 
46 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 of money, the real or virtual diminution of the 
 coin has been reckoned an evil, and, at several 
 periods of the history of England, it has been 
 deemed wise policy, and a necessary measure, to 
 restore “ the ancient standard of value f as it has 
 been called. The last four occasions on which 
 such restoration has taken place, to which alone, as 
 illustrations of our subject, we will allude, are — 
 
 1st. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 2nd. In the reign of William III. 
 
 3rd. In the year 1773. 
 
 4th. In the year 1819. 
 
 From the circumscribed notions of the people, 
 and their habit of estimating everything by money, 
 viewing it as an infallible standard of value, and 
 their consequent prejudice in favor of cheapness , 
 not remembering that gold may be bought too 
 dear, these restorations have always been popular, 
 although great distress has invariably resulted 
 from them. 
 
 In the time of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. 
 the coins had been considerably debased. Eliza- 
 beth set about rectifying this ; but although she 
 restored the gold and silver coins to the relation 
 they bore to each other in the reign of Edward 
 VI., she did not restore the gold sovereign to the 
 same weight it was in Edward’s reign. 
 
 In Edward’s reign lib. weight of gold was 
 coined into 22/.; but Elizabeth coined it into 36/. 
 The pound in Elizabeth’s time was thus still de- 
 preciated ; yet, notwithstanding this, the attempt to 
 
BANKING SYSTEM. 
 
 47 
 
 restore the old standard produced such distress 
 among the common people (aggravated no douht 
 as it was by the destruction of the religious houses), 
 that, to prevent the horrors of a rebellion, the 
 celebrated Poor Law of this reign was enacted. 
 Elizabeth thought she had set the currency 
 question at rest, and 44 conguered the monster which 
 had so long devoured her people .” Yet she was 
 obliged to connive at a secret departure from her 
 own standard; and, before the termination of her 
 reign, it was again publicly altered, in conse- 
 quence of the nation, as the Lord Privy Seal and 
 the Lord Treasurer declared, “ having suffered 
 great loss from the ABUSE OF EXCHANGE; or 
 rather, it ought to have been said, from the 
 Jews and bullion- dealers having got command 
 of the nation through the enhancement of gold.* 
 2nd. In the reign of King William III. the 
 French king had enhanced the money value of 
 ft"’ #lver about 10 per cent.; and bullionists were 
 > pursuing a lucrative trade by sending the best 
 £$ / <y part of our English s ilver to France. Ihis caused 
 r * a great scarcity of silver money in England, so 
 I dil ** that the gold guinea rose to 305. sterling. 
 
 * It was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth that Mr. Greaves, 
 a celebrated mathematician, wrote: — “ If those advantages 
 which one country may make on another in the mystery ot 
 exchanges and valuation of coins , he not thoroughly discovered 
 and prevented by such as sit at the helm of state, it may fare 
 with them after much commerce, as it does with some bodies 
 after much food, that instead of growing full and fat, they 
 may pine away, and fall into irrecoverable consumption. 
 
48 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 Great distress was occasioned by this; and, to 
 remedy it, a re-coinage was resolved on. But 
 this only increased the difficulty ; for government 
 were obliged to buy uncoined silver at a premium, 
 and to borrow money at a high rate of interest, 
 to carry the re-coinage into execution — “ to the 
 great profit it is recorded, “ of all money lenders, 
 and the great loss of all the rest of the nation .” 
 What cured the evil? Why, a species of Bank 
 Restriction Act, in the shape of a prohibition 
 against the further coinage of guineas and their 
 importation into the kingdom. This seems curious ; 
 but it is not the less true : for it had the effect of 
 throwing guineas into disuse; and, as the Bank 
 of England was newly established, bank-notes 
 supplied their place ; and as people found out that 
 they could do without guineas, nobody would 
 give 80s., or even 28s. for them; and, when once 
 that foolish prejudice was checked, which made 
 the people imagine they could not buy gold too 
 dear, the marketable value of guineas fell very 
 rapidly to 22s., and then the prohibition was 
 withdrawn.* 
 
 * Sir William Davenant says, “During the re-coinage of 
 the silver in 1696 and 1697, all great dealings were trans- 
 acted in tallies, bank bills, and goldsmith’s notes. Paper credit 
 did not only supply the place of running cash, but greatly 
 multiplied the kingdom’s stock; for tallies and hank bills did 
 to many serve as well, and to some better, than gold and 
 silver; and this artificial wealth , which necessity had intro- 
 duced, did make us less feel the want of that real treasure 
 which the war and our losses at sea had drawn out of the 
 nation.” 
 
BANKING SYSTEM. 
 
 49 
 
 From that time, till 1773, the coin, both gold 
 and silver, had become greatly reduced in weight, 
 either by wear or artifice — but most 'probably the 
 latter . In this year, the people, who were not 
 conscious of the evils it would bring on them- 
 selves, were loud in their demands for a restor- 
 ation of the standard. This was agreed on, and 
 measures were adopted to bring in the gold. A 
 contraction of the circulation was resorted to. 
 This had the usual effect on the productive 
 classes. The active and industrious part of the 
 population were involved in great distress, and 
 private credit is described as having been brought 
 to a very low ebb. 
 
 The re-coinage or restoration of the gold money 
 was effected , but at such loss and inconvenience , 
 and at such distress to the people , that the corre- 
 sponding restoration of the silver coinage was aban- 
 doned . 
 
 Hence arose new difficulties. The Jews and 
 bullion-dealers saw the advantage immediately of 
 buying the new heavy guineas with the old light 
 silver; and as the silver was a legal tender as well 
 as the gold, the Bank Directors began to see that 
 the heavy guineas were leaving the country, and 
 that nothing but the old depreciated silver was 
 left behind. 
 
 A law was forthwith enacted, limiting the ex- 
 tent of silver as a legal tender to 251. 
 
 Previous to the new gold coinage, the Jews and 
 E 
 
50 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 bullionists bad little control over the Bank ; be- 
 cause gold and silver being equally legal tenders? 
 and as the lowest price was very much governed 
 by the Bank and Excise, if it became profitable 
 to export gold, the Bank could pay in silver, and 
 vice versa ; and thus it could counteract any 
 ruinous exportation of our metallic circulation— 
 their interest being also that of the community. 
 
 But now that it became imperative to meet all 
 demands on it in guineas of full weight or in 
 silver, for payments of 25 1. and upwards, in weight 
 as well as by tale, the Bank could no longer con- 
 trol the bullion market or protect our metallic 
 circulation from exportation, but became itself 
 subject to Jews and bullion- dealers. Hence en- 
 sued the pecuniary difficulties of the American war ; 
 the refusal of the Bank to make advances on the loan 
 in 1783; the perplexities of the Bank Directors be- 
 tween the years 1795 and 1797; and, finally, the 
 Bank Restriction Act of that year * 
 
 The fourth restoration of the currency to what 
 the bullionists call “ a sound and healthy state ” 
 was in 1819, by what is called Peel’s Bill, or Act 
 for the resumption of cash payments. 
 
 But we will reserve our observations on 
 this measure, and will treat of it in a separate 
 chapter. 
 
 * The foregoing account of the restorations of the standard, 
 as it is called, in the reigns of Elizabeth, William III., and in 
 1773, is from a pamphlet entitled “ What is Money?” pub- 
 lished by Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange. 
 
BANKING SYSTEM. 
 
 51 
 
 Our present system of Money and Banking 
 dates from the establishment of the Bank of 
 England in 1694. It was the first public bank- 
 ing establishment in England. Money lenders, 
 doubtless, existed previously, and goldsmiths’ 
 notes, or receipts for gold, silver, or other 
 valuables, used to circulate from hand to hand, 
 along with Exchequer tallies, which formed at 
 that time, no doubt, the currency, or artificial 
 capital of the country. The Bank of England is 
 simply a company of merchants, or a mercantile 
 association for trading purposes. Its capital, 
 which now, including the rest, is 14,500,000/., 
 was at the commencement only 1,200,000/. Its 
 founder was William Paterson, a Scotchman, who 
 in the following year (1695) founded the Bank 
 of Scotland. At first the Bank did not issue 
 bills for less than 20/. It was not till 1759 that 
 it issued notes for 15/. and 10/.; and not till 
 1793 that it issued 51. notes. From 1797 till 
 1819 it issued 1/. notes; and it was permitted, 
 to do so a second time from 1822 till 1829. 
 
 The Bank possesses a monopoly in its circu- 
 lation within a circuit of 65 miles of London: 
 no other bank can issue notes within that district. 
 By law it is obliged to pay its notes in gold at 
 the fixed price of 31. 17s. lOld. per oz. At the 
 same time, with singular inconsistency, it is 
 allowed to issue notes to the amount of 
 14,000,000/., on the security of the Exchequer 
 e 2 
 
52 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 bills which it holds from government, which 
 bills are not payable, in gold, but depend for their 
 validity solely on their being receivable in pay- 
 ment of taxes. 
 
 Until 1826 no banking company was allowed 
 to be formed in England or Ireland with more than 
 six partners. The reason for this law, unless 
 for the purpose of making banks weak in place 
 of strong , we have never been able to find out. 
 
 In Scotland there never was any limitation, as 
 there was in England and Ireland, to the number 
 of partners in banking establishments. There, 
 accordingly , Joint Stock Banks, with large bodies 
 of proprietors, have existed: and just in propor- 
 tion to the number of partners has been the 
 strength and security of each bank. Banking in 
 Scotland has accordingly flourished ; and during 
 the period of 150 years, from 1695 till 1845, the 
 loss to the public from the failure of Scotch banks 
 cannot be estimated at more than 60,000/. Until 
 1844 none of the Scotch banks possessed a mono- 
 poly in their circulation, to the exclusion of other 
 companies. They are not prohibited from issuing 
 11. notes. With the use of these notes, although 
 convertible into gold at the fixed price, as by law 
 established, yet, as the people know the character 
 of the banks, and have perfect faith in the notes, 
 the country is enabled to dispense with gold, and 
 such a thing as a sovereign is seldom seen. By 
 means of its admirable system of banking — per- 
 
BANKING SYSTEM. 
 
 53 
 
 fectly free until the recent legislative interference 
 of Sir Robert Peel, and transformation of it into 
 a monopoly in favour of the existing banks and 
 limitation in the amount of their issues — Scotland 
 has flourished in agriculture, manufactures, and 
 commerce in a greater degree than any other 
 country on the face of the earth. Neither of the 
 rebellions of 1715, nor of 1745, nor the panics 
 of 1797, nor of 1825, nor any other commercial 
 crisis which has occasioned such disaster among 
 the banks in England at various periods, has 
 been able to shake the stability of the Scotch 
 banking system. We believe that at the present 
 time there is not a private bank in Scotland. 
 In the Appendix will be found a list of all the 
 Joint Stock Banks at present in existence in 
 Scotland, with lists of the dates of their establish- 
 ment, of the numbers of their partners, amounts 
 of capital, etc. The number of banks in Scot- 
 land is twenty. The circulation of bank notes in 
 Scotland was, during the four weeks ending 6th 
 December, 1845, 3,804,031/. The united paid- 
 up capital of the Scotch banks is 10,000,000/., and 
 the deposits they hold cannot be estimated at less 
 than 25,000,000/. 
 
 The crash among the English and Irish banks in 
 1825, caused a parliamentary inquiry to be insti- 
 tuted into the Scotch banking system ; and, in the 
 course of the inquiry, the superiority of the Scotch 
 system becoming apparent, the Legislature was 
 
54 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 induced to alter tlie law of England, and to allow 
 the formation of Joint Stock Banks in England 
 and Ireland, with large proprietaries, the same as 
 in Scotland. Since 1826, numerous Joint Stock 
 Banks have accordingly been established in 
 England and Ireland. The principle has extended 
 to our colonial possessions : and in India, Austra- 
 lia, at the Cape of Good Hope, in the West 
 Indies, and in Canada, Joint Stock Banks on the 
 Scotch principle are now successfully established. 
 With some remarkable instances of failure, 
 arising from reckless and imprudent management, 
 all the Joint Stock Banks ‘ have flourished; and, 
 in numerous instances, private banks have merged 
 into the Joint Stock Companies. 
 
 In England there are about a hundred Joint 
 Stock Banks, and 197 private banks. 
 
 In Ireland there are ten Joint Stock Banks, 
 besides the Bank of Ireland, which is now no 
 longer a privileged bank, as its monopoly of issue 
 within sixty -five miles of Dublin was abolished 
 by Sir Robert Peel’s “ complemental” legislative 
 measures of 1844 and 1845, for regulating the 
 business of banking in the United Kingdom. 
 
 In this instance of the Bank of Ireland, the 
 principle of monopoly was rejected . In the con- 
 tinuance of the same monopoly in the case of the 
 Bank of England, and the legislative prohibition of 
 all new banks of issue, and the exclusive privilege 
 conferred on the existing banks, the principle ot 
 
BANKING SYSTEM, 
 
 55 
 
 monopoly was adopted. In the restriction of the 
 issues of the banks of England, Ireland, and 
 Scotland, although the rule for determining what 
 constitutes excess of issues is an arbitrary rule, 
 and has no reference to the respective amounts 
 of the population in the several countries, or 
 their requirements for money, there is a recog- 
 nition of the principle of uniformity; but in the 
 retention or continuance of one pound notes in 
 the circulation of Scotland and Ireland, while 
 they are abolished in England, the principle of 
 uniformity is discarded. 
 
 These incongruities, coupled with the incon- 
 sistency of allowing an issue of 14,000,000/. on 
 a public debt, in the face of the principle that 
 the paper currency of the country shall be im- 
 mediately convertible into gold on demand, show 
 that our national system of banking is devoid of 
 coherence or general principles, and that Sir 
 Bobert Peel’s recent legislation in reference to it 
 has been a mere resort to make-shifts and expe- 
 dients. . 
 
 The circulation of the Bank of Eng- 
 land, according to the monthly 
 return ending 6th Dec., 1845, is £20,961,811 
 Private and Joint Stock Banks in 
 
 England and Wales .... 7,790,889 
 
 Scottish Banks 3,804,031 
 
 Irish Banks 7,716,830 
 
 £40,273,561 
 
56 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OP WEALTH. 
 
 Giving on the average 1/. 8s. for every man* 
 woman, and child in the kingdom. 
 
 But the circulation for the people of England 
 (including the gold circulation , which is mostly 
 confined to the people of England, which can 
 hardly be less than 11. per head) is, with reference 
 to the population, about 21. 14$. per head, whereas 
 in Scotland it is only 1/. 10$., and in Ireland 
 it is less than 1/. per head. 
 
 Compared with England, there is, therefore, 
 no excess in the circulation of Scotland and 
 Ireland; and there was no necessity for any 
 arbitrary restraint or curtailment of their issues. 
 
 But we should like to have these questions 
 determined: Is the comparative poverty of 
 
 Scotland and Ireland the cause or the effect of 
 their smaller monetary power r or deficient 
 circulating medium? And how is it that 
 Scotland, in every respect naturally a poorer 
 country than Ireland, and with only about 
 one- third of the population, has twice the 
 number of banks, and a banking capital double 
 that of Ireland? On what principle is one part 
 of the people to have the privilege of making 
 and using artificial capital, and another part is 
 to be wholly denied that privilege? How should 
 one part be allowed the artificial means of 
 enriching and improving their condition, and the 
 other be prohibited from adopting the same 
 means,, and consequently be kept in poverty? 
 
BANKING SYSTEM. 
 
 57 
 
 From the time of the Conquest down to the 
 Restoration, the annual taxation for the support 
 of the crown, as well as all subsidies, were levied 
 directly from the land. During the civil war, 
 Excise taxes had been levied, but it was not till 
 1660 that they were legally imposed in lieu of 
 the old feudal dues and casualties. The landed 
 proprietors adopted them, because they contrived 
 by means of such taxes to relieve themselves, and 
 throw the burden on the shoulders of the labour- 
 ing and industrious classes, who hitherto had 
 borne no share of the taxation. 
 
 If, with the restoration, a new system of 
 taxation was introduced, there came with the 
 revolution of 1688 an entirely new system of 
 money . It has been said, that for nothing was 
 the Revolution so remarkable as the introduction 
 of a Dutch system of finance. And there can be 
 little doubt that the Bank of England was 
 founded on the model of the Bank of Amsterdam, 
 copied, as it was, from the banks of Venice and 
 Genoa, which preceded it. In place of the old 
 feudal monetary system, which lasted for 600 
 years, and which gave to the crown, in virtue of 
 its sovereignty, the prerogative of issuing the 
 money of the realm, and which, so far as it con- 
 sisted of wooden tallies, receivable in payment 
 of taxes, was the very best kind of money, the 
 notes or obligations of the Bank of England, 
 company of merchants, came to be regarded as a 
 
58 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 superior kind of money; and actually the govern- 
 ment borrowed the notes of the bank, and gave 
 in security Exchequer Bills, bearing interest , thus 
 perverting the relation betwixt the sovereign and 
 the subject — making the crown debtor to the 
 bank, in place of the bank debtor to the crown — 
 sinking the Royal prerogative, and exalting the 
 commercial currency of a trading company over 
 the money of the realm . 
 
 The original capital of the Bank of England 
 was lent to government. The outstanding tallies, 
 which bore no interest , wer e funded, or converted 
 into a debt against government, bearing interest ; 
 and here we have the commencement of the 
 funding system, as it is called, or system of bor- 
 rowing on the faith of the interest being defrayed 
 out of revenues raised from taxes on the people, 
 without the lender having any right to demand 
 payment of the principal sum ; and in default oi 
 such payment, the interest becoming a perma- 
 nent burden on the industry of the country — a 
 millstone round the neck of the people in all 
 future generations. 
 
 In the course of the 150 years which have 
 elapsed, with the loans which have been raised 
 to carry on the different wars in which the 
 country has been engaged — Spanish war — 
 American war — French war, etc. — the amount 
 due by government, or the national debt, has 
 reached, at the present day, the enormous sum in 
 
BANKING SYSTEM. 
 
 59 
 
 round numbers of 800,000,000/.; and the taxa- 
 tion requiring to be raised to pay the interest on 
 the debt, and the expenses of the civil list, and 
 army and navy, is in round numbers not less than 
 56,000,000/. per annum* 
 
 The idea of raising 56,000,000/. of taxes by 
 reverting to the old feudal system of direct taxa- 
 tion on the land, is out of the question; as the 
 whole landed rental of the kingdom, deducting 
 ground rents for houses in towns, does not itself 
 exceed that amount. 
 
 Direct taxation cannot be resorted to in this 
 country, except to perhaps a third of the neces- 
 sary amount: 36,000,000/., or thereabouts, of 
 
 taxes will still remain to be indirectly levied. 
 And reduce here, and augment or impose there, 
 shift as you may, the “ great fact ” still stares us 
 in the face, that out of the annual income of the 
 country 56,000,000/. of taxes must be one way 
 or other annually raised and paid. 
 
 The question of the contest betwixt CAPITAL 
 and lab OK in this country — how labor is ground 
 down to the dust in this contest- — or the CON- 
 DITION of England question — just comes to 
 
 * In the war of 1688 we spent 36 millions sterling; in the 
 war of the Spanish Succession, 62 millions; in the Spanish 
 war, 54 millions; in the Seven Year’s War, 112 millions; in 
 the American war, 136 millions; in the war of the French 
 Kevolution, 464 millions; and in the war against Buonaparte, 
 1159 millions; thus forming a total expenditure for war, in 
 127 years (from the Revolution in 1688, to the downfall of 
 Napoleon in 1815), of 2023 millions of pounds sterling. 
 
60 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 this : — Is there nothing in our restricted system 
 of CURRENCY, founded on erroneous notions of 
 MONEY, which has weighed down the industri- 
 ous people of this country ever since 1819; and 
 which throws the burden of taxation almost 
 wholly on them ; and with such burden makes 
 it a cruel tyranny to compel them to run the 
 race of competition with those countries not so 
 taxed, and to make the underselling the people of 
 those countries in their own markets the great 
 object of all their anxieties and toils? 
 
 Is there no way by which the industrious 
 laborer may be relieved of this burden, and no 
 way to transfer it to the rich — who ought to 
 bear it ? Is there no way by which we may 
 enter into competition with foreign countries 
 with perfect freedom, without injury or injustice 
 to any class, but, on the contrary, with advantage 
 to all? 
 
 We shall endeavour to show that there is: 
 but, first of all, it is necessary to expose the 
 grievous fallacy which lies at the bottom of Peeks 
 bill of 1819; and which is the real cause of all 
 the social evils under which the country is 
 laboring. 
 
61 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FIXED PRICE OF GOLD, AND SIR ROBERT 
 peel’s CURRENCY MEASURES OF 1819, 
 1844, AND 1845. 
 
 For 600 years, from the time of Henry I. till 
 the reign of Queen Anne, the legal tender money 
 of England consisted of wooden tallies, issued by 
 the Exchequer, which circulated concurrently 
 with the coins, or metallic money, of the coun- 
 try.* In these tallies the people were furnished 
 with the means of paying the taxes required by 
 the state for its support. Symbolic or taxation 
 money — money in the right sense of the word, 
 viz. an admonitory instrument or token receivable 
 
 * “ This tally was one-half of a four-sided rod or staff, on 
 which, in its entire state, the sum it purported to represent was 
 carved in transverse notches, varying in width for thousands, 
 hundreds, scores, pounds, shillings, and pence. 1000/. was 
 represented by a notch as broad as the palm of the hand; 
 100/. by one the breadth of a thumb; 20/. by the thickness of 
 the little finger; 1/. by that of a barleycorn; for a shilling, 
 the smallest piece possible was cut out ; a penny was marked 
 merely by an incision, no wood being taken away. These 
 signs were for the unlearned : for others, as well as to guard 
 against frauds, the sum was also written in ink on two oppo- 
 site sides of the staff, the notched side not being one; and 
 finally, with a knife and mallet, the staff was cleft in two 
 lengthwise, one part called the tally, or staff, or check, bearing 
 one inscription and half the notches, being given to the per- 
 son for whose service it was intended ; the other, called the 
 counter-tally, being laid up in a safe place, until its tally 
 should be brought in by the person who had last given value 
 for it.” — Taylor's Essay on Money, p. 17. 
 
62 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 by Exchequer in payment of taxes , in which, real 
 values could be expressed in price — was furnished 
 to them free from the burden of interest to any 
 third party for the use of it. Dr. Davenant, of 
 the Board of Trade, writing in 1796, says: — 
 
 u We had upwards of 14,000,000/. in tallies, 
 lottery tickets, bank stock, malt tickets, and securi- 
 ties of the like nature, which went from hand to hand, 
 having their foundation in public faith. In this kind 
 of currency the landlord received his rent duly : the 
 landlord sold the product of his farm at a high rate : 
 wool , tin , lead , and leather bore a good price ; and , 
 what was of great consequence , the manufactures of 
 the kingdom went on cheerfully ” 
 
 This statement, as to the high price of wheat, 
 is corroborated by the Table constructed by 
 Mr. Taylor, from Sir G. E. Shuckburgh’s Table, 
 in 1798, of the price of wheat, and its value in 
 gold grains, according to the Rev. R. Ruding’s 
 Table,* from which it appears that the average 
 price of wheat in England from 1250 to 1700 
 was 5s. 6d. per bushel, whereas from 1700 to 
 1780, under the new currency of the Bank of 
 England, the price was reduced to 4s. 2d. per 
 bushel. 14,000,000/., not convertible into gold 
 at a fixed price on demand, and the population 
 at the time not exceeding five or six millions, 
 enabled the holders of all kinds of produce to 
 
 * See “ Currency Investigated : Labourer’s Protection,” 
 p. 31. 
 
FIXED PEICE OF GOLD. 
 
 63 
 
 exchange freely and fairly with each other. The 
 general wealth was more generally diffused. In 
 the good prices received, and better wages paid, 
 “ the common people ” participated in the national 
 wealth, which was not accumulated in large 
 masses, as it is now by the capitalists, or monied 
 men, through the operation of money laws, which, 
 by cheapening or lowering prices — appreciating 
 money and depreciating labor — enables the 
 holders or dealers in money virtually to free 
 themselves from taxation, and throw the whole 
 burden on the laboring classes, and thus to en* 
 gross all the real wealth of the country to them- 
 selves. 
 
 Whatever may have been the condition of 
 the people at this time politically , there can be 
 no doubt that their soqal condition, as respects 
 substantial food, and plain home made but com- 
 fortable clothing, was superior to what it is now. 
 It was then that our country received the desig- 
 nation of “ Merrie England .” It was in the days 
 of government taxation money that those noble 
 institutions, Greenwich Hospital, Christchurch 
 Hospital, and other right generous, truly liberal, 
 and munificent institutions were founded and 
 endowed, which contrast so unfavorably with the 
 “ Barracks,” “Jails and Bridewells,” “Union, 
 Workhouses,” and other coercive institutions of 
 these modern days of “a restored standard of 
 value,” “ gold equivalent,” “ non-expansive ” and 
 
64 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 * ‘ contracted ” currency, or system of dear money 
 and cheap commodities, or organised ascendancy 
 of CAPITAL over LABOR. 
 
 We have seen how the tallies came to he 
 funded, and how the Bank of England came to 
 usurp the Boyal prerogative, and make its notes 
 supply the place of the tallies in the currency of 
 the country. Under the new monetary system, 
 introduced by the bank, the money or circulating 
 medium came to be regulated, not by the amount 
 of taxes exigible by the state, but according to 
 what the bank considered best for its own interest. 
 The Bank Directors had the power of making 
 the currency or circulating medium plentiful or 
 scarce, as they pleased, and of thus raising or 
 lowering the prices of all commodities, “ for it is 
 the aggregate quantity qf money circulating in 
 a country which governs price.” Accordingly, 
 while we see that from 1200 till 1700 our 
 farmers received a price equal to 5s. Qd. per 
 bushel for their wheat, for 80 years afterwards 
 they received only 4s. 2d. per bushel, although 
 the annual taxation of the country had advanced 
 in this period from 2,000,000/. to 10,000,000/. 
 How was this? — 
 
 u Simply because,” says Mr. Taylor, “ the establish- 
 ment of the Bank of England in 1694, and the 
 surrender in 1697 of the privilege of issuing taxation 
 money into the hands of an irresponsible corporation, 
 whose care was naturally to increase their own wealth, 
 
FIXED PRICE OF GOLD, ETC. 
 
 65 
 
 which they did with wonderful celerity and success. 
 The price of middling wheat which had been, agreeably 
 to the. Eton tables, for the fifty years from 1650 to 
 1699, 40^. 9 d. per quarter, or 5s. per bushel, averaged, 
 for the next 50 years, from 1700 to 1749, not more 
 than 32s. per quarter, or 4s. per bushel. This fall 
 in price was the consequence of the Bank of England 
 being authorised to enlarge its capital to 2,201,171/., 
 by adding to its Stock 1,001,171/. in Exchequer 
 tallies, while the rest were funded, which securities, 
 by reducing its own issues,* it raised very speedily 
 from a discount of 40 to 50 per cent, till they were 
 worth 112 per cent. “ By these means,” says Ander- 
 son, in his “ History of Commerce,” the greatest estates 
 were raised in the least time, and the most of them 
 that had been known in any age, or in any part of 
 the world.”f 
 
 Money was made scarce; and prices being 
 lowered in proportion, all money lenders got 
 hold of the property of their debtors at from 30 
 to 50 per cent discount. 
 
 From the establishment of the Bank of England 
 — at least from the funding of the tallies in 1699, 
 taxation-money ceased in England while taxation 
 was increased in amount every year. From this 
 period till 1797, or for about a century under 
 the operation of a gold-equivalent currency, the 
 burden of taxation was borne chiefly by the 
 
 * The Bank circulation was, in 1698, 1,240,000/., and in 
 1699, 519,000/. 
 
 f Currency Investigated. Labourer’s Protection, p. 32. 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 productive classes. “ Throughout this period,” 
 says Mr. Taylor, “ we hear of nothing but com- 
 plaints of distress, till at last, in 1797, the system 
 failed, and the Bank of England stopped pay- 
 ment.” Then came the Restriction act of Mr. 
 Pitt, under which the Bank was authorised to 
 discontinue all cash payments till the termination 
 of the war. 
 
 The war terminated in 1815, but the Bank 
 restriction act was in force till 1819, being for a 
 period of 22 years. We had, during this period, 
 what is generally called an inconvertible paper 
 currency, that is, a currency not convertible into 
 gold at a fixed price, but receivable in payment of 
 taxes, and convertible into gold at its market price, 
 the same as into any other commodity. This then, 
 with the difference that the Bank charged interest 
 for its use, was taxation-money; and by means of 
 this money the country was enabled to sustain the 
 heavy expenditure of the war. Indeed, notwith- 
 standing that expenditure, the country flourished ; 
 for all classes participated in the increased wealth 
 —the high prices received by the producers 
 included or covered the taxes which they had 
 advanced to government on the import of raw ma- 
 terial or in the course of the manufacture of their 
 goods, and also the high wages they paid to their 
 work-people ; and, accordingly, both the taxes to 
 government and the wages were cheerfully paid. 
 By means of this currency, the annual produce 
 
FIXED PRICE OF COLD, ETC. 67 
 
 or wealth of the country, was equitably dis- 
 tributed ; for the wealth which those who lived on 
 the taxes, or on rents, or on interest for money, 
 or on annuities, or public salaries drew from 
 the industrious or productive classes, was returned 
 in the high prices which those non-producing 
 classes paid for their articles of consumption. 
 The currency of this period, then, in permitting 
 prices to rise beyond the ordinary or natural 
 value of gold, in a degree commensurate with tax- 
 ation, performed its proper function in distributing 
 equitably amongst all classes, the national wealth. 
 Though a period of War , the heavy expenditure 
 was not felt — the people were not subjected to 
 excessive toil — and notwithstanding the high 
 price of wheat, which rose gradually, and almost 
 in the exact ratio of a penny per quarter for 
 every million of pounds sterling added to the 
 national debt, and on an average was betwixt 
 the years 1797 and 1815, about 90s. the quarter, 
 they were well fed and also were well clothed ; 
 and during this period, there was no u agricultural 
 distress ” — nor f 4 manufacturing distress ” — nor 
 u national distress” — such as we have been so 
 often alternatively visited with during the 30 
 years of Peace which have since elapsed — but of 
 peace unaccompanied with that general enjoy- 
 ment of Plenty which ought to follow in its train, 
 characterised likewise as the period has been, by 
 the existence of a totally different system of 
 f 2 
 
68 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 money — or by a contracted , in place of a suffi- 
 cient currency. 
 
 Although during the continuance of Pitt’s 
 “ inconvertible ” paper currency, England was 
 enabled single-handed to face the world in arms, 
 and was borne triumphantly through one of the 
 severest contests in which a nation was ever 
 engaged — although the population of that period 
 was only 20,000,000, and raised 72,000,000/. of 
 taxes annually with greater ease than 28,000,000 
 now raise 56,000,000/. — although our compara- 
 tively limited foreign trade was then balanced 
 by imports in our favour of nine, ten, or twelve 
 millions of greater value than our exports, and 
 was accordingly so much gain every year of real 
 wealth to the country — and although we were 
 paying off the debt every year after the war, and 
 might have had it nearly altogether extinguished 
 by this time, had we not altered the currency, 
 still Parliament resolved that it should be altered, 
 and that we should “restore the standard of 
 value,” and “revert to the ancient monetary 
 system of the country.” 
 
 This was done by the act of 1819, called “The 
 resumption of Cash Payments Act,” or what is 
 better known by the name of “ Peel’s Bill.” 
 
 The reasons assigned for this measure, as stated 
 by Sir Robert Peel himself, in his speech intro- 
 ducing the Bank Charter Act of 1844, were, 
 that “men of sagacity ’’had observed that the 
 
FIXED PRICE OF GOLD, ETC. 
 
 69 
 
 exchanges had for a considerable period proved 
 unfavourable to this country, in consequence of 
 that “fatal” measure, as he called it, the Bank 
 Restriction Act of 1797 ; and that the notes of the 
 Bank of England had depreciated 33^ per cent, 
 in relation to gold; and, therefore, that it was 
 absolutely necessary to cure the evil of a depre- 
 ciated currency, and adopt “ the sound and 
 wholesome ” measure of compelling the Bank to 
 redeem its notes in gold sovereigns of 5 dwts. 
 3 grs. each, and at a price fixed of 20s. each, or 
 at the rate of 3 L 17s. 10 \d. per oz. 
 
 This bill passed into law, notwithstanding the 
 earnest remonstrances of Sir Robert Peel’s own 
 father, the late Sir Robert Peel, a man of great 
 practical experience — in the face of the strongest 
 protest of the Directors of the Bank of England, 
 and against the representations of many of the 
 most eminent statesmen of the day, who all pre- 
 dicted the ruinous consequences to which it would 
 lead. 
 
 Never was a measure, so deeply affecting the 
 interests and happiness of the great body of ,the 
 people of this country passed in such deplorable 
 ignorance of the first principles of monetary 
 science, and of the monetary history of England, 
 or under such dreadful fallacies as to the nature 
 of the alleged evils it pretended to cure. 
 
 What is meant by the exchanges being against 
 this country, which was so alarming to “ men 
 
70 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 of sagacity” ? Exchange is neither more nor less 
 than a comparison of the value of the money 
 of our country with the money of another 
 country. . 
 
 “ For instance/’ says Mr. Capps, “ our present 
 sovereign is found on comparing (or weighing) it 
 with French money, to be worth intrinsically 25 
 francs, 20 centimes of that money; this therefore is 
 the par of exchange. In like manner, compared with 
 the money of Amsterdam, the sovereign is found to 
 be worth about 1 1 florins ; this par of exchange is 
 founded on the intrinsic worth of the silver and gold 
 contained in the different coins., Now what Sir 
 Robert Peel says i men of sagacity ’ in the year 1810 
 observed, was this, that whereas the paper-pound had 
 formerly been worth 25 francs, 20 centimes in French 
 money; it was found by these 4 men of sagacity’ that 
 at sucessive periods it kept constantly decreasing in 
 value, when compared with the money of other 
 countries ; — that, compared with French money, the 
 pound so fell in value, as that it became successively 
 worth only 24, 23, 22, 20, 18, and even as little as 
 17 francs and some odd centimes — that is, that the 
 one-pound Bank Note which would have formerly 
 purchased the silver 1 contained in 25 francs, 20 
 centimes would only at last purchase the silver con- 
 tained in 1 7 francs.’ ”* 
 
 But what is there alarming in this? Why 
 
 » 
 
 * Lecture on the Currency, delivered at the British Coffee 
 House, 13th June, 1844, p. 36. Samuel Clarke, Pall Mall. 
 
FIXED PRICE OF GOLD, ETC. 
 
 71 
 
 should this Appreciation of gold, which caused 
 the depreciation of the note, be considered an 
 evil ? What was it but the corresponding rise in 
 gold, which maintained its relation with wheat 
 and iron, and other commodities, which rose in 
 price as taxation was increased, and which, with 
 reference to taxation, actually kept us at par with 
 other Countries? 
 
 The incidence of taxation, which while it does 
 not add to the intrinsic value of commodities, 
 ought to increase prices, seems to have been en- 
 tirely overlooked by the authors of the measure 
 of 1819. Suppose 5 dwts. of gold and four 
 bushels of wheat to be equal values, or natural 
 equivalents, and suppose a tax of 33 J per cent, 
 to be imposed on the wheat, it is absolutely 
 necessary that the gold should be appreciated in 
 symbolic or taxation-money, or should rise in 
 price in the same ratio, in order to preserve its 
 natural relative value with the wheat. If not, 
 then the 5 dwts. of gold, equal to 20s will pur- 
 chase 26s, 8d. worth of wheat. 
 
 While the price of gold was not fixed, wheat 
 rose in price beyond its natural value, almost 
 uniformly at the rate of Id. per quarter in pro- 
 portion to every million of debt which was con- 
 tracted. Whereas, since 1829, the price of wheat 
 lias not, on the average, exceeded 50s. the quarter, 
 which is 45s. or 50s. below what it ought to have 
 been, so as to correspond with the amount of the 
 debt and the annual taxation. 
 
72 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OP WEALTH. 
 
 Is it to be wondered at, then, that onr agri- 
 culturists should not have been making money 
 — that our farmers are ill off— have no capital 
 wherewith to cultivate their lands — cannot em- 
 ploy laborers, and that the laborers whom they 
 do employ are paid the smallest possible remu- 
 neration for their labor ? People cry out against 
 the Corn-law; but the Corn-law is in a great 
 degree a nullity. It is neutralized by the Money- 
 law. 
 
 Sir Robert Peel supposed, that in adopting the 
 pound sterling, or standard gold pound of the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth, he was reverting to 
 the “ ancient monetary system of the country.” 
 Now we have seen that the antient monetary 
 system, from the reign of Henry I. till after the 
 establishment of the Bank of England, was a 
 system of taxation-money, payable in taxes, and 
 not in gold at a fixed price. Again, the sove- 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth contained, as we have 
 seen, 174 grs. of gold, whereas that which has 
 been adopted as the standard in the reign of 
 Queen Victoria, contains only 123 grs. We have 
 not returned, then, to the ancient monetary 
 policy of the country, nor have we adopted 
 what has been supposed to be the pound sterling, 
 or standard of value; for if we had, then the 
 pound in the silver of the present day would be 
 equal to 27 s. In historical knowledge of our 
 
 monetary system, Sir Robert Peel seems to be 
 
FIXED PRICE OF GOLD, ETC. 
 
 73 
 
 deficient, as lie appears to be ignorant of the dis- 
 tinction betwixt the standard of value and the 
 measure of value, which, along with the school 
 of political economists to which he belongs, 
 he confounds with each other. The pound of 
 Elizabeth was a" good enough measure of 
 value, we may suppose, in her reign, but no 
 more applicable to the present state of things in 
 these days, under the pressure of enormous taxa- 
 tion, than the pound of William the Conqueror, 
 of 540 grs., would be. 
 
 The pound sterling may always be a coin of 
 certain weight and fineness ; but government has 
 no right to fix its price.* u It is the oblivion of 
 this maxim, founded on the authority of Mr. Locke, 
 which f says Sheriff Alison, “ has produced, and 
 will produce, as long as the present law on the 
 subject lasts, such fatal effects from the obligation 
 to pay in the precious metals”] 
 
 These fatal effects are observable in the Dupli- 
 cation of the national debt and annual taxation of 
 the country; for just as prices are kept down by 
 the fixed price for gold, are all fixed money pay- 
 ments enhanced. The farmer now pays two 
 
 * “ It is necessary that your gold and silver should be coined, 
 and have the king’s stamp on it, in order to secure men in 
 receiving it, that there is so much gold in each piece. But it 
 is not necessary that it should have a fixed value put on it by 
 public authority — Locke. 
 
 f “England in 1815 and 1845; ora Sufficient and Con- 
 tracted Currency,” p. 63 . William Blackwood and Sons, 
 1845. 
 
74 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 quarters of wheat for one, in all his money en- 
 gagements, and every other producer in the same 
 way. Those who live on taxes, rents, interest, 
 annuities, accordingly all profit at the expense 
 of the productive classes, on whose shoulders, 
 the burden of taxation is made to fall, by the 
 adoption of a measure of value which does not 
 include taxation. 
 
 These fatal effects are observable in the injury 
 done to the Home Market ; for just in proportion 
 as so large a portion of the people as form the 
 productive classes are ill-remunerated, they can- 
 not consume; and so the home trade is circum- 
 scribed: whereas, give six millions of laboring 
 men in the United Kingdom 2s. a week addi- 
 tional wages, and it will lead to an increased con- 
 sumption equal to 30,000,000/. 
 
 The evil is observable in the enormous loss 
 which now is consequent every year in our 
 Foreign Trade. To adopt the same measure of 
 value in this country, so highly taxed, as is ap- 
 plicable to countries not so taxed, and to force 
 down prices at home to the level of these other 
 countries, is to compel our productive classes to 
 exchange their taxed products for the untaxed 
 commodities of the foreigner. Accordingly, the 
 whole of our foreign trade, since the adoption ot 
 the money law of 1819, has been to enrich the 
 foreigner, and to so great an extent has this 
 annual balance in favour of the foreigners reached, 
 
FIXED PRICE OF GOLD, ETC. 
 
 75 
 
 that estimated in real value, it cannot be com- 
 puted at less for the year 1845 than the prodi- 
 gious sum of 70,000,000/.* 
 
 The evils of Absenteeism spring from the same 
 cause; for, by spending their incomes in un- 
 taxed countries, all our nobility and gentry, who 
 in such numbers flock to the continent every 
 year, wholly escape taxation; whereas, if gold 
 were allowed to rise in price, their incomes would 
 be measured in so much less gold, and, pro tanto , 
 the industrious classes in this country would be 
 relieved. 
 
 The evil is also observable in the Fluctuations 
 in prices, and Panics and Stagnations in trade, 
 which inevitably ensue from our present currency 
 being based on gold at a fixed price. For should 
 prices rise in any degree in consequence of in- 
 creased demand, then the foreigner, finding gold 
 to be the cheapest commodity in the English 
 market, will take in return for his imports, not 
 our goods, but our cheap gold. Hence not only 
 
 * In the year 1843, the official value 
 
 of our Exports was, 
 
 The declared value 
 
 £117,877,278 
 
 52,276,449 
 
 Balance in favor of the Foreigner, £65,600,829 
 
 '' “ Is such an extension in the quantity of our Exports at- 
 tended with no proportionate extension in the price received , 
 either a national or social advantage ? Is it a good thing for 
 this country to be converted into the slave of the world, and 
 to be yearly doomed to produce more work for less pay? 
 That may be a benefit to the slaveholder : is it an equal be- 
 nefit to the slave himself? Would it not be better for him 
 to have less work and more pay?”— England in 1815 and 
 1845.— p. 104. 
 
76 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 is the sale of our goods restricted, but, in 
 consequence of the gold being taken out of the 
 country, the Bank of England finds it necessary 
 to interfere in order to bring back the gold, 
 which it does by what is technically called put- 
 ting on the screw , that is contracting the currency 
 by refusing discounts and monetary accommoda- 
 tion; hence prices are lowered, so that the gold 
 may return to purchase the low-priced goods; 
 but the effect, in the first instance, is a panic , 
 forced sales, losses in business, bankruptcies, 
 stagnations in trade, non-employment of the 
 laboring classes, and misery and starvation; 
 whereas, if gold were allowed to rise in price 
 concurrently with the rise in the prices of other 
 commodities, the equation in its value with theirs 
 would be preserved, and the foreigner would reap 
 no advantage, as our commodities, with reference 
 to their intrinsic value, though higher in price, 
 would be kept at par with the untaxed commo- 
 dities of the continent, and there would be none 
 of those “ drains ” of gold, which are infallibly 
 the precursors of commercial embarrassment and 
 national distress.* 
 
 * We are aware how imperfectly we have illustrated the 
 “fatal” workings of Peel’s monetary system. We would 
 strongly advise all who are interested in the well-being of the 
 great body of the people of England — the industrious classes 
 — to study and make themselves masters of the writings of 
 Mr. John Taylor. In his work entitled “ Currency In - 
 vestigated they will find the fallacy of the idea that the 
 depreciation of the pound of account is an evil most 
 completely exposed ; and the principle that gold should, as a 
 
FIXED PRICE OF GOLD, ETC. 
 
 77 
 
 In 1818, the population of Great Britain was 
 14,000,000, and the circulation of notes, or 
 paper currency of the country, was 48,000,000/, 
 being at the rate of 3 l. 6s. 8d. per head ; since 
 then, the currency has been contracted, till now, 
 
 matter of justice and necessity, be permitted to rise in price 
 in the ratio of taxation triumphantly vindicated. The depre- 
 ciation of the unit or pound of account is nothing but the 
 appreciation of gold. If gold should rise from 44 to 66* 
 just as a 66th part is one third less than a 44th, will the pound 
 or unit virtually fall to 13s. 4 d. in place of 20s.? Peel’s 
 legislation contravenes this law of equation, hnd hence the 
 fixed price of gold is rendered, an unjust in place of a just 
 measure of exchange ; and in place of being a fixed standard, 
 it positively unfixes all values, and is just about as wise a 
 measure as it would be to attempt to fix the mercury in the 
 thermometer, and insist that the degree it indicated always 
 was a true index of the temperature of the atmosphere. It 
 is as necessary that gold should be left free to rise and fall, in 
 order that it may justly measure other values — as it is that 
 the mercury should rise and fall. 
 
 The principle is also ably illustrated in an admirably 
 condensed statement of the whole question and relative 
 diagram entitled, “ The Pitt Pound and the Peel Pound,” by 
 Mr. Alexander Wilson, the Honorary Secretary of the Society 
 for the Emancipation of Industry. In the columns of the 
 Sentinel Newspaper, published weekly, the “fatal” operation 
 of Peel’s Bill, is exposed, by its able Editor, from time to 
 time, in an uncommonly lucid and forcible manner. The 
 Bankers’ Circular, The Morning Post, The Sun, The Pic- 
 torial Times, The Midland Counties Herald, The National 
 Reformer, all advocate, with great ability, and a full know- 
 ledge of the subject, the cause of monetary reform — and 
 demonstrate, that without free trade in money free trade in 
 other commodities will prove simply a farce. The Times 
 and Morning Chronicle, “ certain good reasons them there- 
 unto moving,” are the organs of the Bullionists or money 
 monopolists. They accordingly deem the cause of monetary 
 reform a delicate subject to touch on, and choose to preserve 
 a discreet silence thereupon. It is too esoteric in their estima- 
 tion to be permitted to become the subject of popular en- 
 lightenment. Like Demetrius the silversmith, they exclaim, 
 “ Great is Diana of the Ephesians! ” 
 
78 .. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 we have only 1/. 8s. per head. On what prin- 
 ciple is it, that the means of distributing the 
 products of industry should have been thus con- 
 tracted, just as population has increased, and 
 their powers of multiplying these products, or 
 increasing their wealth, have been augmented? 
 On what principle deprive an active, industri- 
 ous, and enterprising people of instruments for 
 carrying on their industrial operations? Why 
 condemn an educated and enlightened, a civi- 
 lized and Christian community, by whose mem- 
 bers, mutual faith and confidence, mutual 
 credit, in short Christian co-operation, can be 
 best practised, to the use of gold and silver 
 money, or a commercial currency, controlled by 
 the quantity of gold and silver in the country ; 
 continually fluctuating in its aggregate amount, 
 but tied down, notwithstanding, to a fixed 
 price? Why deny them the power of credit? 
 Why compel them to use gold and silver in- 
 struments of trade and husbandry — gold yard 
 measures as it were — silver spades as it were? 
 Why are they in exchanging with one another 
 — distributing each other’s wealth — required 
 by law to use golden beams and scales, silver 
 weights and measures ? Wealth all around ! 
 Storehouses and Granaries filled with food ! 
 Warehouses stuffed to the roof with broad cloth ! 
 Shops crammed with every good thing ! And 
 yet we must neither touch, taste, nor handle ! 
 
FIXED PRICE OF GOLD, ETC. 79 
 
 We must u cloy the hungry edge of appetite 
 with the bare imagination of a feast,” simply 
 because we are under the delusion, that pieces 
 of gold, of fixed price, are alone the com- 
 petent instruments of interchange. “ Water, 
 
 water, all around, and not a drop to drink !” 
 simply, because the law ordains we shall not 
 fetch the water except in golden pitchers. Alas ! 
 are we not forsaking the living God? Are we 
 not putting our faith in gold and silver? Are 
 we not saying: — “I have made gold my hope, 
 and said to the fine gold, Thou art my confidence” ? 
 In our fixed gold standard have we not raised 
 a golden-headed image, before which the peo- 
 ple are required to bow down and worship? 
 Have we not erected a temple to Mammon in 
 our land? And, in upholding the standard so 
 pertinaciously as he does, while the people are 
 crushed to the very earth in consequence, is 
 not Sir Robert Peel only ministering as the 
 high priest therein? 
 
 If there be one measure more than another, 
 calculated to bring about the decline and fall of 
 Britain — to counteract the influence of religion, 
 and the efforts of education — to cause the people 
 to retrograde into barbarism — it is the course of 
 policy which has been pursued since 1819, of 
 exalting gold over every other commodity or 
 product of industry — of giving a power and 
 ascendancy to the holders of gold and silver over 
 
80 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 the producers and holders of all other descrip- 
 tions of real wealth — of conferring on the holders 
 of gold the monopoly of money, and denying to 
 the owners and possessors of other kinds of wealth 
 the right to coin their credit, and actually 
 compelling them, not only to reckon , but to 
 discharge all payments in the measure of value 
 itself. 
 
 “ Connected with this subject [the revenue],” says 
 General Harrison, the late President of the United 
 States, in his inaugural address, delivered in Decem- 
 ber, 1840, “ is the character of the currency . The 
 idea of making it exclusively metallic, however well 
 intended, appears to me to be fraught with more fatal 
 consequences than any other scheme (having no relation 
 to the personal rights of the citizens) that has ever 
 been devised. If any single scheme could produce 
 the effect of arresting at once that mutation of con- 
 dition by which thousands of our most indigent fellow- 
 citizens, by their industry and enterprise, are raised 
 to the possession of wealth, that is one. If there is 
 one measure better calculated than another to produce 
 that state of things so much deprecated by all true 
 republicans, by which the rich are daily adding to their 
 hoards , and the poor sinking into penury , it is an ex- 
 clusive metallic currency. Or if there is a process by 
 which the character of the country for generosity and 
 nobleness of feeling may be destroyed by the great 
 increase and necessary toleration of usury, it is an 
 exclusive metallic currency.” 
 
 A people may be politically enslaved, they 
 
FIXED PRICE OF GOLD, ETC. 81 
 
 may be kept in subjection by the strong hand, 
 but the open tyranny of the sword is not so dire 
 as the secret tyranny of gold. To enslave a 
 people by keeping them poor and miserable, by 
 compelling them to give long hours of toil and 
 large quantities of their products in exchange for 
 small quantities of gold, or, in other words, to 
 subject them to cheapness , and prevent their labor 
 and industry from rising in value, is a system of 
 policy at once sordid and ungenerous , mean and 
 dastardly. Instead of being in conformity with, 
 it is in complete opposition to, “ the ancient 
 monetary policy” of England : it is “ a Dutch 
 system of finance.” From this system, we were 
 freed during the war under the monetary policy 
 of Pitt. The country then flourished, despite of 
 the war. But the Peel pound has restored the 
 Dutch system; and just as the characters of their 
 authors are unlike, the Peel pound is unlike the 
 Pitt pound. Pitt was a man of enlarged views ; 
 he died poor but he enriched his country — Peel 
 is a man of huckster capacity, who will die rich ; 
 but the acquisition of his vast riches has been 
 concomitant with the impoverishment of the 
 great body of his countrymen. 
 
 What was it but this system of enhancing 
 money and depreciating labor which constituted 
 the tyranny of the J ews over the Canaanites ? F or 
 “ making the ephah small and the shekel great, 
 and falsifying the balances by deceit,” the Jews 
 G 
 
82 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 incurred the wrath of the Almighty. What is it 
 but the same principle which is condemned when 
 St. Paul denounces the love of money, or the 
 over valuing, or the purchasing of gold and silver 
 too dear, as “ the root of all evil”? What brought 
 about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire ? 
 
 u During the entire ages of Trajan and the 
 Antonines,” says Sismondi, “ a succession of virtu- 
 ous and philosophic emperors followed each other; 
 the world was at peace, the laws were wise and 
 well administered; riches seemed to increase; each 
 succeeding generation raised palaces more splendid, 
 monuments and public edifices more sumptuous than 
 the preceding; the senatorial families found their re- 
 venues increase , the treasury levied greater imposts . 
 But it is not on the mass of wealth, it is on its 
 distribution , that the prosperity of states depends: 
 increasing opulence continued to meet the eye, 
 but man became more miserable ; the rural popula- 
 tion, formerly active, robust and energetic, were 
 succeeded by a foreign race, while the inhabitants 
 of towns sank in vice and idleness, or perished in 
 want , amidst the riches they had themselves created.”* 
 
 How closely does this description of Rome 
 resemble the condition of England at the 
 present day, — “ the rich becoming richer, the 
 poor, poorer;” “great wealth dwelling side by 
 side with great poverty our capital increas- 
 ing; our people perishing, amid the riches they 
 have themselves created ! 
 
 * Italian Republics, — p. 9. 
 
FIXED PRICE OF GOLD, ETC. 
 
 83 
 
 And from the same cause, in both cases, the 
 “ voracity of one class,” occasioning, “ the penury 
 and oppression of the other.” Peel’s Bill of 
 1819, which was passed without any reference 
 to indirect taxation, or any provision for it by 
 reduction of the public burdens, or fixed money 
 payments, to the altered standard of value, has 
 thrown the whole burden of the indirect taxes 
 on the poorer classes of our industrious popu- 
 lation, and has forced them to pay annually, 
 more than 30,000,000/. a year, which, during the 
 war, in the high prices they paid for all ar- 
 ticles of consumption, had been borne by the 
 wealthy classes. 
 
 “ More than six hundred millions have been 
 wrung,” says Mr. Taylor, “ since 1819, from the over- 
 worked and underfed bodies of the wretched beings 
 who have been the victims of this ill-considered, 
 this cruel measure; which still demands its annual 
 sacrifices of human life, to an extent horrible to 
 contemplate. Compared with this, the prostrate 
 Hindoos before the car of Juggernaut, the aged 
 people swept away by the Ganges, the widows 
 sacrificed at suttees, and even all the lives lost 
 and miseries endured by an accursed slave trade, 
 dreadful as these things are, fail to exhibit, in 
 their immediate and remote effects, a mass of hu- 
 man suffering equally appalling.” * 
 
 This system of making money scarce and dear, 
 * Currency Explained, — p. 26 . 
 
84 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 making it so scarce with relation to other com- 
 modities, that their value falls in relation to the 
 money, and that large quantities of the commo- 
 dities have to be exchanged for small quantities 
 of the money, creates a dire struggle for money: 
 it is made an object of such keen desire, that 
 in its attainment, men forget that they may 
 pay too dear for it. In place of considering 
 it a means to an end, they regard it as the sole 
 end of their being ; and they sacrifice, not only 
 their bodily health, by extreme labor, but all 
 moral integrity and mental independence, to 
 secure the largest share to themselves. All “ ge- 
 nerosity and nobleness of feeling” in the na- 
 tional character, as General Harrison says, “ comes 
 to be destroyed.” By the money standard every 
 thing is judged. u A good man” is a man pos- 
 sessed of money. “ Will it pay?” is the test 
 of every undertaking. The economy of pounds, 
 shillings, and pence, governs the spirit of our 
 legislation. The largest amount of revenue 
 is the surest sign of the national well-being. 
 The smallest expenditure in the support of the 
 poor, the most perfect administration of the 
 law, and if our annual exports shew great in 
 figures, we are held to be carrying on a pro- 
 fitable foreign trade, though our imports in 
 return may not be equivalent to one third, 
 when estimated in what constitutes their real 
 value, the labour employed in their production. 
 
FIXED PRICE OF GOLD, ETC. 
 
 85 
 
 We mistake the sign for the thing signified. 
 In our deadly competition for gold, in our 
 anxiety to get hold of, and to accumulate it, by 
 sacrificing or giving away large quantities of our 
 goods annually in exchange for small quantities 
 of gold, and toiling, and starving our people to 
 enable us to do this, we forget, that gold and 
 silver are not re-productive. We forget that 
 there is that which “ withholdeth more than is 
 meet, yet tendeth to poverty ;” whereas, if we 
 would give our attention to real, or living wealth, 
 in all its powers of re-production, just as we are 
 told that there is that which u scattereth and yet 
 increaseth,” we should find that, in communicating 
 a bountiful share of the wealth they create to 
 our laboring men, and by paying them high 
 wages for their labor, by their increased con- 
 sumption, increased production would be re- 
 quired; trade would be stimulated, production 
 and consumption would go hand in hand; and 
 we should hear nothing of those dogmas of 
 44 over-production,” 44 over-population,” etc., which 
 a false system of political economy has incul- 
 cated; and which arise, not from the inability 
 of the people to consume, or because all their 
 wants are supplied, but because the legisla- 
 ture conceives that the accumulation of gold in 
 the coffers of the Bank of England, under pre- 
 tence of keeping the foreign exchanges in our 
 favour, is the summum honum of all civil polity, 
 
86 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 the great end of national exertion; and that, 
 provided this end be accomplished, it matters 
 not that the people be kept in idleness, their 
 energies be wasted, and their comfort and 
 happiness destroyed. What is it that induces 
 all gambling and speculation, all the job- 
 bing on the Stock Exchange and in the 
 Share Market, all the craft and cunning, false- 
 hood and fraud, by which modern mercantile 
 enterprize is now so unfortunately character- 
 ised ? The auri sacra fames , the accursed thirst 
 for gold, induced by our gold-equivalent cur- 
 rency. The honest pursuit of industry has now 
 no chance; cheap prices — dear money, afford 
 no opportunity for gaining a comfortable or re- 
 spectable livelihood by the steady pursuit of 
 business, or in the quiet walks of trade. Po- 
 litical corruption, mercantile cupidity, specula- 
 tion, gambling, jobbing, fraud, and falsehood, not 
 to refer to the many broken hearts, pining in 
 obscurity, and suffering all the ills of poverty, 
 through the artificial scarcity of money, or the 
 thousands of respectable females driven from the 
 paths of virtue just from the same cause — prices 
 being so low, labor so cheap , that it is impossible 
 for them to earn an honest livelihood ; — all are the 
 natural consequences of Peel’s Bill. How true is 
 it that money may be bought too dear ! How true, 
 that the love of money, or the inordinate desire 
 which is the result of a wicked law, compelling 
 
FIXED PRICE OF GOLD, ETC. 87 
 
 us to pay too dear for it, is “ the root of all 
 evil ” / * 
 
 It is cheering and satisfactory that the people 
 are beginning to discern the truth on this great 
 question. There are symptoms of the awakening 
 of the minds of the people to a consciousness 
 that there is no inevitable necessity, let Sir 
 Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, and Lord 
 Brougham say what they please to the contrary, 
 why, in the midst of abundance they should be 
 starving — why, with the power of creating wealth 
 ad infinitum , and of a spirit of enterprise and 
 energy of purpose adequate to the greatest under- 
 takings, they should not be insured the greatest 
 amount of social happiness, instead of being de- 
 nied that happiness, all through false doctrines 
 of political economy, and an ignorant and un- 
 scientific, or fraudulent and wicked, and totally 
 inadequate monetary system. Already it has 
 been proposed, that the railway world should 
 issue their own currency, so as to free themselves 
 from dependence on the capitalists, or exclusive 
 and legally protected money power.* The work- 
 ing classes are establishing banks of industry, 
 to be worked by their own currency — mutual 
 exchange companies are multiplying — also invest- 
 ment associations, all tending to new organisa- 
 tions of credit, founded on, and representing not 
 
 * Vide Mr. Rowcroft’s admirable pamphlet, entitled, “ Cur- 
 rency and Railways.” Smith and Elder, 1846. 
 
88 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 only realised wealth, but the skill, enterprise, 
 industry, and capacity to create new wealth, and 
 the integrity, energy, and intelligence, or moral 
 and intellectual power of the people themselves, 
 by which means a commercial currency will 
 be constituted, independent of the govern- 
 ment, broader in its foundation, more endur- 
 ing, more efficient for its purposes, than all the 
 gold 
 
 “ which far 
 
 “ Outshines the wealth of Ormus and of Ind;” 
 or than all the gems 
 
 “ The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.” 
 
89 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 REMEDY. — LET GOLD BE LIBERATED FROM 
 ITS FIXED PRICE. — CONCURRENTLY WITH 
 FREE TRADE IN CORN, LET THERE BE 
 FREE TRADE IN MONEY. 
 
 A GREAT many who admit the mighty injustice 
 committed by the act of 1819, suppose that the 
 evils it inflicted on the people have long ago 
 ceased, and are not now felt. This, however, 
 is a great mistake. Hear what Sheriff Alison 
 says on this point : — 
 
 “ It is often said that the bill of 1819 was a great 
 error, but that it has been got over ; that prices have 
 become accommodated to the new and diminished 
 amount of the currency; that the sufferers by it are 
 bankrupt, dead, and buried; and that every thing 
 would be thrown into confusion again, if any change 
 were now made. There never was a greater mistake. 
 The seven hundred and seventy-five millions of the 
 national debt has not become accommodated to the 
 change. The fifteen hundred millions of private debt 
 in the community has not found its debtors inured to 
 the change. The payers of taxes whose incomes 
 have been lowered fifty per cent, by its effects, have 
 not become reconciled to the change. The manufac- 
 turing and commercial classes, exposed every five or 
 six years to a frightful monetary crisis, fatal to a 
 large part of the persons engaged in business, in con- 
 
90 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 sequence of the present obligation on the bank to pay- 
 in specie at the mint price, are not enamoured of it. 
 The farmers, who find the prices received for their 
 produce lowered from 50 to 75 per cent., are not 
 reconciled to it. The landlords, whose embarrass- 
 ments are hourly increasing, and one-half of whom 
 are in a state of hopeless insolvency, from the conse- 
 quent and unavoidable reduction of their rents, are 
 not accommodated to it. The nation, whose resources 
 have been so seriously impaired by its effects, that 
 any increase of revenue from indirect taxation has 
 become impossible, and the ultima ratio of an income 
 tax indispensable in the thirtieth year of peace, has 
 not become accustomed to it. The evils of the system , 
 as long as it is adhered to, are lasting, corroding, and 
 irremovable. They are not over, they are only in their 
 infancy.* 
 
 And what is the nature of the evil ? Simply 
 this, that by fixing the price of gold, and assuming 
 it at this fixed price as the standard of value, 
 all other commodities are measured thereby : con- 
 sequently no higher price can be obtained. Taxes 
 ought to be added to, or included in price; but 
 commodities into the production or creation of 
 which taxes have entered, are measured by un- 
 taxed gold, or according to a standard applicable 
 only to natural values or untaxed commodities : 
 the producers of wealth, or the industrious pro- 
 
 * England in 1815 and 1845, p. 109. Blackwood and Sons. 
 
REMEDY. 
 
 91 
 
 ductive classes come, therefore, to be exclusively 
 burdened with the payment of the whole of the 
 indirect taxes, and the rich idle consumers who 
 obtain articles of consumption minus the taxes, 
 escape scot free. The employer of labor find- 
 ing he cannot obtain a profit in adequate prices, 
 is obliged to resort to every method of cheap pro- 
 duction, by reducing the wages of his laborers 
 — employing women and children in lieu of 
 adult male labor, and again substituting ma- 
 chinery for women and children : thus low wages, 
 non-employment and starvation stalk through- 
 out the land; the poverty of the working classes 
 re-acts on the class of small traders above them; 
 their restricted means, on the class of wholesale 
 dealers above them ; the natural healthy internal 
 home trade of the country is destroyed. Here 
 then, we find the reason why u capital’’ does 
 not find sufficient scope in our home or country 
 trade, which is the natural channel in which it 
 ought to flow — giving back — just as the sun re- 
 turns in fertilizing showers the moisture it has 
 drained from the earth — by means of fair and 
 adequate prices, and ample wages, the money 
 which it has drained from all the industrious 
 classes in taxes , rents , tithes , poor-rates, interest , 
 and profits ; such return, indeed, being as abso- 
 lutely essential to the health of the body politic, 
 as the reflux of the blood from the heart to the 
 extremities is to the natural body. “ If the 
 
92 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 lower classes ”, says Robert Hall, “ are involved in 
 wretchedness , the more elevated shall not enjoy 
 their prosperity unimpaired .” For want of atten- 
 tion to this truth — from forgetfulness to the com- 
 fort and happiness of the working classes — from 
 not allowing them in wages a just share of the 
 aggregate wealth, which they mainly, by their 
 own labor, create — by cheapening their labor 
 and their produce — that is by protecting gold by 
 a fixed price, so that they are compelled to give 
 large quantities of their labour — long hours of 
 wearisome toil, and large quantities of their pro- 
 duce in exchange for small quantities of gold or 
 money; in short, by keeping them down in 
 place of raising them up in the scale — making 
 them slaves socially when we cannot do it politi- 
 cally — the body politic is now suffering all the 
 evils of congestion— the blood does not flow to 
 the extremities — the circulation is impeded. In 
 consequence of its unjust treatment of labok, CA- 
 PITAL itself is now suffering. It cannot find vent. 
 In speculations , or great gambling transactions, out 
 of the ordinary course of honest and steady busi- 
 ness, and in extended foreign trade , it convul- 
 sively seeks relief, overlooking the fact that fitful 
 periods of commercial excitement have ever been 
 followed by languor and prostration, and that 
 cheapness and reduction in the wages of labor, 
 and consequent deterioration of the working 
 classes have been the never-failing concomitants 
 
REMEDY. 
 
 93 
 
 of all extension of our foreign trade. How, in- 
 deed, can it be otherwise, when extended foreign 
 trade is only to be accomplished by underselling 
 the foreign producer? And how can we under- 
 sell, unless we produce cheaper ? And how can 
 we produce cheaper, unless our labourers are 
 supported cheaper? Cui bono , then, extended 
 foreign trade ; if it involve the degradation of the 
 British labourer? Foreign trade of this sort is 
 virtual slavery to the great bulk of our popula- 
 tion ; and foreign nations become their task 
 masters. 
 
 In sovereigns of 5 dwts. 3 grains, the whole 
 annual produce of Great Britain, agricultural, 
 manufacturing, mineral, and piscatorial, can 
 hardly be valued at more than 500,000,000/. 
 
 It may be divided as follows, viz : — 
 
 Public Taxes . 
 
 Local Taxes, including Tithes and 
 Poor Rates .... 
 Rent of Lands and Houses . 
 Interest and Profits 
 Wages . 
 
 £ 
 
 50,000,000 
 
 50,000,000 
 
 100,000,000 
 
 175.000. 000 
 
 125.000. 000 
 
 £500,000,000 
 
 The population is 28,000,000. Of these, one- 
 fourth or 7,000,000 constitute the non-productive 
 classes. Deduct 4,000,000 paupers, however, 
 and there are only 3,000,000 who are supported 
 
94 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 OUt of the TAXES, TITHES, RENT, INTEREST, 
 and profits. These consume three-fourths of 
 the annual wealth of the country, or have in- 
 comes at the rate of 120/. per head, each man, 
 woman, and child, leaving just one-fourth for 
 21,000,000 labourers, or at the rate of 61. per 
 head for each man, woman, and child of this 
 class of the population. What a fearful and 
 unjust disparity is here ! 
 
 How can any man have the effrontery to 
 maintain that cheapening produce will improve 
 the condition of the British labourer? Does not 
 cheap produce make dear money? And is it 
 not demonstrable, nay self-evident, that if you 
 cheapen produce, you just enable the non-pro- 
 ductive classes to command a larger proportion 
 of the national wealth— you just, in a corre- 
 sponding degree, augment the burdens of the 
 productive classes, and strengthen the dominion 
 of CAPITAL over LABOR. 
 
 How, then, is LABOR to be emancipated from 
 this dominion of CAPITAL? Simply by doing 
 away with the fixed price of gold, or absurd 
 artificial standard of value enacted by the law of 
 1819, and by freeing the Bank of England from 
 the obligation of paying their notes in gold at 
 31. 17 s. 10 \d. per oz. Gold is simply the measure 
 of value. As a measure it is preferred to corn, 
 or any other commodity, just because it condenses 
 great value in small bulk. But it is as absurd to 
 
REMEDY. 
 
 95 
 
 fix its price, as it would be to fix tbe price of the 
 quarter of wheat, and compel the bank to redeem 
 its notes in quarters of wheat at that price, how- 
 ever different the price might be in the market. 
 Then, as a standard, to fix the price of gold makes 
 it no more a standard, than to fix the mercury in 
 the thermometer to a certain degree (were that 
 possible) would be a standard. Indeed the sup- 
 position, that by fixing the price of gold you 
 obtain a fixed standard, is as absurd as the suppo- 
 sition, that after regulating a chronometer by the 
 meridian of Greenwich, it will, in all longitudes, 
 be a correct and infallible indicator of the sun’s 
 altitude. This is Sir Kobert Peel’s mistake. 
 He would make his standard the measure of all 
 values, whether at Odessa, Dantzic, or New 
 Orleans — without reference to the different de- 
 grees in the conditions of the people- — their inodes 
 of living — their burdens, either of rent, taxes, or 
 of any other kind. He is like the commander of a 
 ship, ignorant of navigation, who does not under- 
 stand the sextant, and cannot take an observa- 
 tion. By sticking to his chronometer, his crew 
 do not get their meridian till long after the sun 
 goes down — not only so, but the vessel is on a 
 wrong course, and the chances are it will not re- 
 turn to port, but will be wrecked on some foreign 
 shore. 
 
 The flagrant error lies in mistaking the mea- 
 sure of value for the standard of value. 
 
96 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 The evil of this mistake may be illustrated in 
 this way : a map represents a district or county. 
 The county, say, is 20 miles square. The map 
 is only 20 inches square, constructed according 
 to a scale or measure of an inch to a mile. 
 
 The currency or circulating medium of the 
 country, may be compared to the map, call it 
 20,000,000/. sterling, and say it represents a 
 certain aggregate amount of real wealth, com- 
 puted in gold sovereigns of the value of 20s. 
 each. 
 
 The map may be reduced one-half. It will 
 still represent the county. But in this case, half 
 an inch comes to represent a mile. 
 
 So may the aggregate amount of currency be 
 reduced one-half, and all commodities will fall 
 in price accordingly; but if the pound, or unit 
 of account be not reduced — be not dfe-preciated — 
 if the gold sovereign be fixed in its price, and 
 the law will not allow it to rise, the pound will 
 then measure double of every thing it did before, 
 to the great loss of all the productive classes, 
 and the corresponding gain of the monied, non- 
 productive classes, or idlers who live on taxes, 
 rents, tithes, etc. etc. 
 
 It is no paradox, then, to say, that Peel’s 
 fixed price unfixes all values, and operates secretly 
 and insidiously in favor of the monied power.* 
 
 * The secret lies here : the aggregate quantity of money 
 has been gradually lessened during the existence of Peel’s 
 
REMEDY. 
 
 97 
 
 In what other way — to what other cause but 
 this, is it owing that the moneyed classes, few’ 
 though they be, your capitalists, bullionists, and 
 millionaires, are every year— nay, every day, 
 becoming richer, adding to their hoards, while 
 their industrious fellow-countrymen are becoming 
 only still more wretched ? To what other cause 
 is it owing that those men are getting possession 
 of all the land, and are supplanting the ancient 
 aristocracy and the class of independent yeomen, 
 the cultivators of their own lands? How truly 
 did Queen Elizabeth describe a false standard of 
 value, which measured every thing in favor of 
 money or capital, and against labor, as “ the mon- 
 ster which devoured her people /” 
 
 Let us then remove the protection in favor of 
 gold, while we do away with all other protective 
 duties. Let gold find its level— let it rise in 
 price commensurately with taxation . The pound of 
 account in this case, as gold rises in price, will 
 
 monetary policy ; but the quantity composing each aliquot 
 part of which the whole is composed, has not, at the same 
 time, been lessened. The pound, or unit of account, is kept 
 at 5 dwts. (3 grains), whatever the aggregate quantity of gold 
 may be. For the sake of illustration, suppose 100 to represent 
 the whole gold or bullion which forms the basis of the circu- 
 lation— 5 dwts, or a sovereign being the unit, and therefore 
 the 100th part of the whole; but suppose bullion reduced, 
 by a foreign drain , 20 per cent., or to 80, the 100th part 
 would then no longer be 5 dwts ; it would be only 4 dwts. But 
 we fix the unit, and therefore, in the case supposed, the 5 
 dwts. are raised from the 100th to the 80th part; that is, it is 
 enhanced in value 20 per cent. So that we see how, by this 
 juggle of a fixed price for gold, the money power maintains its 
 unjust ascendancy. 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 appreciate. All the fixed burdens will be lessened 
 in proportion. In place of a paper currency, 
 each pound of which represented, and was equi- 
 valent to five dwts. three grains of gold, we shall 
 have a currency consisting of pounds, equivalent 
 to — say four dwts. only. 
 
 Estimated in this currency, our \ nnnn 
 
 i j 1 1 ii > x o 00,000,000 
 
 annual produce would be, j ' f 
 Let it be divided as before, the fixed burdens 
 remaining the same. 
 
 Public taxes £50,000,000 
 
 Local taxes, including tithes, 50,000,000 
 
 Rent of lands and houses,. . 100,000,000 
 
 Interest and profits, 175,000,000 
 
 Wages, 225,000,000 
 
 £600,000,000 
 
 By means of such a currency, then, it is seen 
 how the 21,000,000 laborers would have their 
 income nearly doubled — how they would be 
 relieved of taxation, and the burden would be 
 thrown on the rich, who by Peel’s Bill were 
 nefariously freed from that burden ; and how it 
 would effect a more equitable distribution of 
 national wealth. 
 
 “ With the distributive power which such a cur- 
 rency gives, the wealth of the country is propor- 
 tionally diffused through all classes of society, in 
 their several grades, and as no excessive toil is ex- 
 acted from the laborer in field or factory, a fair 
 
KEMEDY. 
 
 99 
 
 opportunity is given him of raising himself in the 
 social scale.” * 
 
 As to Foreign trade , our high prices would 
 not interfere with the intrinsic value of our 
 goods or produce. The foreigner would un- 
 doubtedly sell us his goods at the high prices, 
 but then, these high nominal prices would re- 
 present just the quantity of gold which would 
 be the fair value for his goods: so when we 
 sold abroad, we should take just the quantity 
 of gold which would be a fair value, know- 
 ing that the gold will command the high prices 
 in our own currency; and thus, foreign trade 
 may be extended — the foreign exchanges no 
 doubt, in this case being against us — but being 
 so only nominally. 
 
 u Under such a currency,” says the author of the 
 Pitt Pound versus the Peel Pound, u the paper 
 pound becomes the pound of account in all trans- 
 actions in this country; and it derives its value 
 from being received at the treasury in payment of 
 taxes. Its value is regulated by the amount of 
 indirect taxation. It loses its power of purchasing 
 as taxation is increased. It increases its power 
 of purchasing as taxation is diminished. Under 
 this system, no panics , no fluctuations in prices can 
 be experienced, the pound presenting a uniformity of 
 value , indicated by the gradual operation of taxation. 
 
 * Pitt Pound versus Peel Pound. 
 H 2 
 
100 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 Under this system, all our wealth remains among 
 us and we may confer as much of it as we please on 
 the industrious classes of society , by increasing the 
 
 WAGES OF THE LABORER AND ARTISAN.” 
 
 Let us accordingly free ourselves from the 
 idea, that gold has some quality in it which 
 makes it more valuable than any other com- 
 modity. Let us bear in mind, that we may 
 purchase it too dear. On the same principle that 
 it is deemed right to buy corn cheap — that is, 
 to give a small quantity of money in exchange 
 for a large quantity of corn — it is right that I 
 should buy money cheap , by giving a small 
 quantity of corn in exchange for a large quantity 
 of money. Two parties exchanging with each 
 other cannot buy cheap. One or other of the 
 parties must lose, if there is to be any buying 
 cheap. This needs no demonstration; and there- 
 fore the celebrated maxim, “ to buy cheap and sell 
 dear,” is neither more nor less than a new trans- 
 lation of “ Heads I win, tails you lose.” In con- 
 travention of the maxim, however, Great Britain, 
 ever since 1819, has been buying dear and sell- 
 ing cheap — nay underselling , and by the process 
 has been impoverishing her people. 
 
 Occurrere morbo — let us abrogate the fixed 
 price for gold. Let the crown assume the exer- 
 cise of the royal prerogative, and issue taxation 
 money in the shape of Exchequer notes (not 
 bearing interest), in sets of 1/., 5/., 10/., 100/., and 
 
KEMEDY. 
 
 101 
 
 1000/. each, to the amount of the annual taxa- 
 tion. Let these be receivable in taxes, being at 
 the same time convertible into gold as into any 
 thing else, at the market price. Let commer- 
 cial obligations be restricted, only by the require- 
 ments of the community, such obligations being 
 payable in the money of the realm. 
 
 If we are to have free trade — free trade in 
 money as well as in corn is essential. There can 
 be no free trade in the one without the other. 
 This will very soon be seen. Currency reform 
 will force itself on the attention of the people 
 and of government. 
 
 Had we a minister — not the mere organ of the 
 bullionists, as Sir Robert Peel undoubtedly 
 is — but a man of popular sympathies, of 
 warm-hearted, and patriotic feeling, he would 
 count it a privilege, a happiness, a glory, to 
 introduce an amended monetary system at the 
 present period. For let an enlightened system 
 of money only be adopted, and to use the words 
 of Mr. Taylor, in the following eloquent passage, 
 which we cannot do better than quote, by way 
 of conclusion: — 
 
 u A scene of peace, order, and plenty will succeed 
 to the terrible distractions of the late, and the fright- 
 ful forebodings of the present period. Other coun- 
 tries, following our example, will attain a greater 
 degree of freedom and ease than the world has 
 witnessed under any form of government for three 
 
102 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF WEALTH. 
 
 thousand years. The slavery of the soul, that worst 
 of slavery, will cease. Every man will sit under his 
 own vine and fig-tree, none making him afraid. 
 Mammoris empire will he destroyed , for no one will care 
 for riches , where all may easily have enough . Art, 
 science, and literature, will present their treasures 
 freely to all people ; and those who have a taste for 
 their enjoyment will not want means or leisure to 
 indulge it. Above all, charity and true piety, having 
 their ample scope and opportunity for action, will be 
 found, we may hope, in every breast, since all must 
 be sensible what great mercies they have had bestowed 
 on them by Divine Providence, and how necessary it 
 is that they should show their gratitude to the Giver 
 of all good, by endeavouring to extend the benefits 
 and blessings which they themselves enjoy, to others 
 in distant regions, who are less fortunately circum- 
 stanced in regard to civilization, religion, and liberty,” 
 —Paper Money Vindicated , p. 78. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 LIST OF JOINT STOCK BANKS OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Name of Bank. 
 
 When Esta- 
 blished. 
 
 No of 
 Part- 
 ners. 
 
 Paid-up 
 
 Capital. 
 
 Price of 
 Shares. 
 
 Paid up 
 per Share. 
 
 Rate of 
 Dividend. 
 
 1 Aberdeen Bank 
 
 1767 
 
 42 2 
 
 £ 
 
 200,000 
 
 £ s. d. 
 7 12 6 
 
 £ s. d. 
 5 0 0 
 
 5 pr. ct. 
 
 2 Aberdeen Town and 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 7£ pr. ct. 
 
 Country Bank . 
 
 1825 
 
 484 
 
 150,000 
 
 27 0 0 
 
 15 0 0 
 
 3 Ayrshire Banking Co. . 
 
 Nov. 1, 1830 . 
 
 110 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 Bank of Scotland . 
 
 1695 
 
 
 1,000,000 
 
 178 * 0 0 
 
 100 0 0 
 
 6 pr. ct. 
 
 5 British Linen Company 
 
 1746 
 
 
 500,000 
 
 230 0 0 
 
 100 0 0 
 
 8 pr. ct. 
 
 6 Caledonian Banking Co 
 
 July 22, 1839 . 
 
 920 
 
 125,000 
 
 4 10 0 
 
 2 10 0 
 
 7£ pr. ct. 
 
 7 Central Bank of Scotland 
 
 April, 21, 1834 
 May 3, 1839 . 
 
 465 
 
 53,450 
 
 38 0 0 
 
 25 0 0 
 
 6 pr. ct. 
 
 8 City of Glasgow Bank . 
 
 . t 
 
 1,000,000 
 
 16 0 0 
 
 10 0 0 
 
 6 pr. ct. 
 
 9 Commercial Bank of 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Scotland 
 
 1810 
 
 
 600,000 
 
 170 0 0 
 
 100 0 0 
 
 6 pr. ct. 
 
 10 Clydesdale Banking Co. 
 
 1838 
 
 1322 
 
 
 15 13 6 
 
 10 0 0 
 
 6 pr. ct. 
 
 11 Dundee Bank 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 J2 Eastern Bank of Scot- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 land . 
 
 1838 
 
 520 
 
 400,000 
 
 11 12 6 
 
 10 0 0 
 
 5 pr. ct. 
 
 13 Edinburgh and Glasgow 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Bank . 
 
 Dec. 31, 1838 . 
 
 1560 
 
 1,000,000 
 
 5 0 0 
 
 5 0 0 
 
 6 pr. ct. 
 
 14 National Bank of Scot- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 land . 
 
 March 21, 1825 
 
 1490 
 
 1,000,000 
 
 16 12 6 
 
 10 0 0 
 
 6 pr. ct. 
 
 15 North of Scotland Bank- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ing Company 
 
 Oct. 11, .1836* 
 
 1601 
 
 281,940 
 
 8 0 0 
 
 5 0 0 
 
 ^7 pr. ct. 
 
 16 Perth Banking Company 
 
 1766 
 
 184 
 
 100,050 
 
 162 0 0 
 
 100 0 0 
 
 free of 
 Income 
 Tax. 
 
 7 pr. ct. 
 
 17 Royal Bank of Scotland 1727 
 
 877 
 
 2,000,000 
 
 168 10 0 
 
 100 0 0 
 
 6 pr. ct. 
 
 18 Union Bank of Scotland,! April 8, 1844 . 
 
 
 
 95 0 0 
 
 50 0 0 
 
 7£ pr. ct. 
 
 (late Glasgow Union\ 
 
 
 
 
 
 Bank) 
 
 ‘April 5, 1830 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 19 Western Bank of Scot-! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 land . 
 
 Oct. 11, 1832 . 
 
 1027 
 
 1,500,000 
 
 85 10 0 
 
 50 0 0 
 
 6 pr. ct. 
 
 LIST OF JOINT STOCK BANKS OF IRELAND. 
 
 [fName of Bank. 
 
 When Esta 
 blished. 
 
 No. of 
 Part- 
 ners. 
 
 Paid-up 
 
 Capital. 
 
 Price of 
 Shares. 
 
 Paid up 
 per Share. 
 
 Rate of 
 Divide nd. 
 
 1 Bank of Ireland . 
 
 1783 
 
 
 £ 
 
 3,000,000 
 
 £ s. d. 
 196 0 0 
 
 £. s. d. 
 100 0 0 
 
 8 pr. et. 
 
 2 Belfast Banking Co. 
 
 Dec., 1827 . 
 
 258 
 
 125.000 
 
 46 0 0 
 
 25 0 0 
 
 |7 pr. ct. 
 
 3 Hibernian Bank, Dublin 
 
 June, 1825 
 
 
 250.000 
 
 100.000 
 
 
 
 5 pr. ct. 
 
 4 London and Dublin Bank 
 
 1843 
 
 426 
 
 
 10 *0 0 
 
 4 pr. ct. 
 
 5 National Bank of Ireland 
 
 Jan. 24, 1835 . 
 
 1102 
 
 450,000 
 
 22 10 0 
 
 22 10 0 
 
 5 pr. ct. 
 
 6 N. Banking Com. Belfast 
 
 Jan. 1, 1825 . 
 
 179 
 
 150,000 
 
 60 0 0 
 
 30 0 0 
 
 12 pr. ct. 
 
 7 Provincial Bank of Ire- 
 
 Sept., 1825 
 
 867 
 
 500,000 
 
 NewShs, 
 
 40,000 
 
 209,050 
 
 47 0 0 
 
 25 0 0 
 
 8 pr. ct. 
 
 land . 
 
 8 Royal Bank of Ireland . 
 
 Sept., 1836 . 
 
 437 
 
 19 0 0 
 12 0 0 
 
 10 0 0 
 10 0 0 
 
 5 pr. ct. 
 
 9 Tipperary Jt. Stk. Bank 
 
 1836 
 
 
 
 
 10 Ulster Banking Com- 
 pany, Belfast 
 
 April, 1836 . 
 
 419 
 
 200,000 
 
 2 12 0 
 
 2 10 0 
 
 5 pr. ct. 
 
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