its value and the uncertainty of its fate continually operate, night and day, to produce this destructive effect. Having no real value in itself, it depends for support upon accident, caprice, and party; and as it is the interest of some to depreciate, and of others to raise its value, there is a continual invention going on that destroys the morals of the country...... There are a set of men who go about making purchases upon credit, and buying estates they have not wherewithal to pay for; and having done this, their next step is to fill the newspapers with paragraphs of the scarcity of money and the necessity of a paper-emission, than to have it made a legal tender under the pretence of supporting its credit; and when out, to depreciate it as fast as they can, get a deal of it for a little price, and cheat their creditors; and this is the concise history of papermoney schemes.

But why, since the universal custom of the world has established money as the most convenient medium of traffic and commerce, should paper be set up in preference to gold and silver? The productions of nature are surely as innocent as those of art; and in the case of money, are abundantly, if not infinitely, more so. The love of gold and silver may produce covetousness; but covetousness, when not connected with dishonesty, is not properly a vice. It is frugality run to an extreme.

But the evils of paper-money have no end. Its uncertain and fluctuating value is continually awakening or creating new schemes of deceit. Every principle of justice is put to the rack, and the bond of society dissolved: the suppression, therefore, of paper-money, might very properly have been put into the act for preventing vice and immorality.

The pretence for paper-money has been, that there was not a sufficiency of gold and silver. This, so far from being a reason for paper-emissions, is a reason against them. Gold and silver are articles of importation; and if we set up a paper-manufactory of money, it amounts, as far as it is able, to prevent the importation of hard money, or to send it out again as fast as it comes in; and by following this practice we shall continually banish the specie, till we have none left, and be continually complaining of the griev ance instead of remedying the cause. Considering gold and silver as articles of importation, there will in time,

unless we prevent it by paper-emission, be as much in the country as the occasion of it require, for the same reasons there are as much of other imported articles. But as every yard of cloth manufactured in the country occasions a yard the less to be imported; so it is by money, with the difference, that in the one case we manufacture the thing itself, and in the other we do not. We have cloth for cloth, but we have only paper dollars for silver ones.

Of all the various sorts of base coin, paper-money is the basest. It has the least intrinsic value of anything that can be put in the place of gold and silver. A hobnail or a piece of wampum far exceeds it. And there would be more propriety in making those articles a legal tender, than to make paper so.-Paine.

Paper-money is like dram-drinking, it relieves for the moment by a deceitful sensation, but gradually diminishes the natural heat, and leaves the body worse than it found it. Were not this the case, and could money be made of paper at pleasure, every sovereign in Europe would be as rich as he pleased. But the truth is, that it is a bubble, and the attempt vanity. Nature has provided the proper materials for money, gold and silver, and any attempt of ours to rival her is ridiculous.-Idem.

Paper-money appears, at first sight, to be a great saving, or rather, that it costs nothing; but it is the dearest money there is. The ease with which it is emitted by any assembly at first, serves as a trap to catch the people in at last. It operates as an anticipation of the next year's taxes. If the money depreciates after it is out, it then, as I have already remarked, has the effect of fluctuating stock, and the people become stock-jobbers to throw the loss on each other. If it does not depreciate, it is then to be sunk by taxes at the price of hard money; because the same quantity of produce, or goods, that would procure a paper dollar to pay taxes with, would procure a silver one for the same purpose. Therefore, in any case of paper-money it is dearer to the country than hard money, by all the expense which the paper, printing, signing, and other attendant charges come to, and at last goes into the fire.

Suppose one hundred thousand dollars in paper-money to be emitted every year by the assembly, and the same sum to be sunk every year by taxes, there will then be no more than one hundred thousand dollars out at any one

time. If the expense of paper and printing, and of persons to attend the press while the sheets are striking off, signers, &c., be five per cent., it is evident, that in the course of twenty years' emissions, the one hundred thousand dollars will cost the country two hundred thousand dollars: because the paper-maker's and printer's bills, and the expense of supervisors and signers, and other attendant charges, will in that time amount to as much as the money amounts to; for the successive emissions are but a recoinage of the same sum. But gold and silver require to be coined but once, and will last a hundred years, better than paper will one year, and at the end of that time be still gold and silver. Therefore the saving to government in combining its aid and security with that of the Bank in procuring hard money, will be an advantage to both, and to the whole community.-Idem.

Bank paper is no more national wealth than newspapers are; because an increase of promissory notes, the capital remaining unincreasing in the same proportion, is no increase of wealth. It serves to raise false ideas which the judicious soon discover, and the ignorant experience to their cost.-Idem.

CHAPTER IV.

OF THE FUNDING SYSTEM.

ALTHOUGH the feudal system was a barbarous social institution, it possessed the advantage of entailing on the fomenters of war its unavoidable cost and calamities. The old barons used to arm themselves and vassals at their own expense, and support them during the contest. There was then no standing army nor permanent revenue,-those who tilled the land fought the battles of the country. Under such a system, wars could neither be very long in their duration, nor very remote in their objects. Foreign expeditions were suited as little to the national resources as to the avocations of the people. The only time that could be spared to settle public quarrels was between seed-time and harvest, and the only treasure they could be provided

with beforehand, was the surplus produce of the preceding year. Hence, wars were generally either carried on languidly, or were of short duration. Their operations were frequently interrupted by truces, and sometimes discontinued through mere feebleness. A warlike leader was often stopped short in his victorious career, either from the want of resources, or the necessity of allowing his followers to return home to provide subsistence for the following

season.

The state of the sovereign was as little favourable to protracted contests as the condition of his lieges. His revenue was derived partly from lands reserved as a royal demesne, and partly from feudal casualties, and afforded a slender provision for maintaining the royal dignity, and defraying the ordinary expenses of government, but was altogether inadequate to the support of numerous and permanent armies. Supplies from the people were obtained to a certain extent; but the people neither possessed the means, nor, happily, had acquired the habit, of granting liberal supplies. Princes, under any emergency, real or supposed, or actuated by any scheme of ambition, had recourse either to borrowing or pawning. The loans which they raised were partly compulsory, and, as the payment was ill secured, the rate of interest was high. Sometimes the jewels of the crown were pledged, and sometimes the crown-lands were mortgaged. In this manner the revenues of most of the powers of Europe were anticipated and encumbered.

A new state of society introduced a new mode of supporting war. Instead of borrowing on their own credit, sovereigns learnt to borrow on the credit of posterity. The issue of war no longer depended on a single battle or successful irruption, but on the length of the public purse. It was not money, however, that formed the sinews of war, but credit. Credit superseded money, and modern policy found out the expedient of supporting wars for temporary objects, and entailing the burden of them on future generations. This system possessed too many facilities to be abandoned, or not to be carried to the utmost extent of which it was capable. And, accordingly, we find, wherever the system of borrowing and funding has been introduced, it has gone on with an accelerated velocity, till the payment of the princi

pal became quite chimerical, and government were obliged to compound with their creditors for the interest.—Black

Book.

Alas! the funds are no place at all! and, indeed, how should they, seeing that they are, in fact, one and the same thing with the National Debt? But, to remove, from the mind of every creature all doubt upon this point, to dissipate the mists in which we have so long being wandering, to the infinite amusement of those who invented these terms, let us take a plain common-sense view of these loaning transactions. Let us suppose, then, that the government wants a loan, that is, wants to borrow money, to the amount of a million of pounds. Its gives out its wishes to this effect, and, after the usual ceremony upon such occasions, the loan is made, that is, the money is lent by Messrs. Muckworm and Company. We shall see by-andby, when we come to talk more fully upon the subject of loans, what sort of a way it is, in which Muckworm pays in the money so lent, and in what sort of money it is that he pays. But, for the sake of simplicity in our illustration, we will suppose him to pay in real good money, and to pay the whole million himself at once. Well what does Muckworm get in return? Why, his name is written in a book against his name is written, that he is entitled to receive interest for a million of money; which book is kept at the Bank Company's house, or shop, in Threadneedle Street, London. And, thus it is that Muckworm "puts a million of money into the funds.'" Well," you will say, "but what becomes of the money?" Why, the government expends it, to be sure: what should become of it? Very few people borrow money for the purpose of locking it up in their drawers or chests. "What? then the money all vanishes; and nothing remains in lieu of it but the lender's name written in a book?" Even so: and this, my good neighbours, is the way that "money is put into the funds."

But, the most interesting part of the transaction remains to be described. Muckworm, who is as wise as he is rich, takes special care not to be fund-holder himself; and, as is always the case, he loses no time in selling his stock, that is to say, his right to receive the interest of the million of pounds. These funds, or stock, as we have seen, have no bodily existence, either in the shape of money or of XIII.