the amount of the taxes in the distinct and sanguinary revolukingdom is calculated to produce tions. In some of those colonies

such effects in an unprecedented of North America, which are now degree, yet he ventures, under the the United States, a colonial paindulgence of your Honourable per money, introduced more than House, to express his conviction, sixty years ago, spread ruin and that this cause of evil has received beggary amongst a people, who great additional and most mis-appeared to be so happily situated chievous force from the co-opera- as to have no want ungratified. tion of a paper-money, forced into In the States of Austria, in Dencirculation and acceptance by di-mark, in Sweden, and in every versartful and unjust contrivances, other country, where such a sysand changeable in its value at the tem of fiction has prevailed, ruin pleasure of those by whom it has and misery have always, sooner been made, issued and managed. or later, been its fruits, of which fruits the United States themselves have not, as your Petitioner will hereafter beg leave to be permitted to show, wholly escaped the bitter taste.

The chief reason of this universally evil effect of such fictions is not less evident than the effect itself is notorious. Money being the universal standard, by comparison with which the value of all things bought and sold is ascer

Your Petitioner fears not to state, that, if your Honourable House will be pleased to refer to the history of the calamities and convulsions, which have taken place in civilized states, during the last hundred and twenty years, you will find, that one of the most powerful of the causes has been a false, or fictitious, money, under the denomination of Bills, Notes, Assignats, and others, and always composed of Paper, bearing on it (tained; or, being the sign, which a promise to pay such or such [represents the value of all things sums to the bearer or possessor of such paper. In France, many years ago, a scheme of this description spread ruin far and wide, and, of late years, it has actually

which men buy, sell, or with regard to which they enter into contracts of loan, or otherwise, in a pecuniary way; such being the character of, or the office performed by, money, and money

produced, by its co-operation with heavy and vexatious taxes, two being inseparable from the daily

oncerns of every man from the Prince to the Ploughman, it is bvious, that when money, when his standard of value, is changeble, whether at pleasure or from ccident, and especially if the hanges be sudden as to time and reat in degree, a real violation of contracts, a transfer of proper yunjustly from one to another, and ruin, misery and confusion

must ensue.

If your humble Petitioner were addressing himself to a body less enlightened than your Honourable House; if he had the misfortune to have to offer his opinions and prayers to men so profoundly ignorant of all the principles of political economy as to hope to cure the national calamities by voluntary contributious, or by setting labourers to dig holes one day and to fill them up the next; if he had the mortification to be addressing his prayers to men of this shallow and vulgar-minded description, he might think it necessary to illustrate his representations by supposing the number of cubic inches of the Winchester bushel, or the number of ounces of the pound weight, or the number

It is out of those just notions of the sacredness of money, as a standard of value and as the vital principle of contracts, that the law has arisen which considers to be treason the counterfeiting of the coin of the realm, such act of counterfeiting being to strike at the very root of society itself; and, as your Petitioner humbly pre-of longitudinal inches of the foot sumes to believe, counterfeiting is neither more nor less than a changing of the value of money, an operation, which, when it takes place partially and in a small degree, produces injuries in a similar ex-ever disgraced the forms of legis-tent; but, when such changing of lation would perceive, that such the standard of value is general, changes would cause a real viola-sudden, and, with regard to the tion of innumerable contracts, and community, as secretly performed that distress and ruin to innumeras the works of the traitorous able persons must inevitably fol-coiner, then it becomes a scourge low; but, having the unspeak more mortal than the pestilence that walketh by day and the arrow that flieth by night.

measure, to be, all of a sudden, changed in a great degree, and without any previous notice to the public; and he is certain that even the most stupid assembly that

able felicity to be addressing himself to your Honourable House,

hardening of the penal laws, and
finally a gradually produced dis
location of all the joints and liga
ments which held together with
out grudging and without violence
all the orders of that admirable
community that formed the people
of England.
of England. As the powers

whose fame for profundity is surpassed only by your fame for candour and purity, your Petitioner has no need to resort to illustrations of any kind, and, therefore, hastened on by the fear of abusing the well-known indulgence of your Honourable House, he proceeds to trace to your Honourable Paper-Money increased real pro House the progress of this unre-perty naturally grew into larger lenting scourge, called Paper parcels, small farms became gra

Money.

dually less numerous, 'till, at last, they became wholly extin guished, while their industrious and virtuous cultivators sunk down into a state of labourers, and while the labourers, seeing no hope of ever acquiring any share of the profits of their labour, became less and less desi rous of abstaining from demands on the parish rates.

In the early stages of its existence this mortal enemy of human happiness and freedom, was, like the first fibres of the cancer, felt only in occasional twitches; but, as it advanced in bulk, its effects became more and more regularly and severely felt, 'till, at last, it has produced all the deadly effects now before our eyes. For a long series of years its visible effects were a regular increase of gambling, of fraud, and of all the vices engendered by a dependence on trick rather than on industry and talent; and its visible effects were a gradual changing of the real property of the country from the hands of the ancient owners this fictitious representative of into the hands of the dealers in value, who had amassed to themPaper-Money, a gradual under-selves, in exchange for their mining of that natural magistracy paper, large portions of the real which is ever the best bond of wealth of the nation, under pro society, a consequent gradual mises to exchange the paper

Such, as your Honourable House must have perceived, were amongst the effects of this bale ful system of Paper-Money previous to the year 1797, when i assumed a bolder and more des perate character; for, at that period, the makers and issuers of

into

old at the pleasure of the holder, gaged in agriculture, trade, ma

nufactures, and commerce; when your Honourable House reflects on this circumstance, and sees clearly, as your Petitioner humbly presumes you will, the mortal blow that this numerous and active part of the community must have received from this arbitrary change in the standard of value, he is quite sure that your Honourable House will need seek no farther for the cause of a want of employment and great national misery; and yet, in this sweeping violation of all private con

id, all of a sudden, and by an ct unparalleled in its extent as Tell as in its wickedness, fulfil o the very letter the predictions f that Great Political Writer, ho had foretold, only a year efore, that such would be their onduct. Thence forward these akers and issuers poured forth heir fictitious money so as to enance prices to an astonishing egree, and, when they had iven their paper in exchange for men's real property, for their states in fee, or, more generally, n exchange for mortgages or tracts, in this ruinous oppression ther securities, they suddenly, nd without any previous notice, o diminished the quantity of their aper in circulation as to lower rices one half in nominal amount, o lower the nominal value of real property, of stock in trade and of abour; and, they thus, by a hanging of the standard of value it their own arbitrary will, acquired a legal demand upon all borrowers to double the real mount of the sums lent.

of private borrowers, in this stab into the heart of individual industry, enterprize and hope, your Petitioner is convinced that. your Honourable House will permit him to say, that there is seen a part only of the cruel effects of this arbitrary changing of the standard of value; for, it must be manifest to your Honourable House, that, if the private borrower must inevitably be ruined by this fraudulent operation, the bare possibility of which never could have entered his mind at the time of receiving the loan, the whole nation, except the lenders to the public and except

When your Honourable House eflects, that it is in the class of orrowers that you see all the greatest motives to exertion, all he most active and most enterprising part of the persons en-those persons who derived emolu

ment from the taxes, must also Honourable House will her be ruined by the same operation, by which, in fact, the sums required in taxes, great as those sums were, were doubled in real

amount.

find the real immediate cause the nation's calamities, and tha all the uew notions of the injuri ous effect of the Poor-Laws, a Surplus-Population, and of Sudden Transition from War t Peace, will, at once, vanish, and

Here then, and, as your Petitioner presumes humbly to express his belief, here only, is the real im-"like the baseless fabric of mediate cause of the present" vision, leave not a wreck be "hind." frightful calamities of the nation; Could it be possible, however for, when your Honourable House for a doubt still to remain in the reflects on the numerousness of mind of your Honourable House the class of borrowers, on the the experience of the Unite great portion of the productive States of America must, as you labour of the country which this Petitioner confidently believes class sets and keeps in motion; wholly remove that doubt; for when you reflect on the vast pro- though the whole of the principa portion of the product of la- of the Public Debt in this country bour which the taxes take away does not exceed in amount the from those who labour and con- annual interest of the Debt wit vey to those who do not labour; which our country is unhappil when you reflect that the total burthened; though the taxes her rain of many borrowers, the be so light as for their very straightened means of others, and ence to be absolutely unknown t the discouragement of all, must the great mass of the community necessarily cause the money raised yet, from a sudden diminution the quantity of Paper-money whic in taxes and paid to the lenders to had been in circulation previously be retained in a state of comparato 1815, ruin and misery tive inactivity, and, in numerous spread far and wide over all th instances, transferred in loans commercial part of the commu public and private and in other nity, a consequent stagnation o investments to foreign countries; trade ensued, and, for the fir when your Honourable House time in the history of the country reflects on these circumstances, a want of employment and paupe your Petitioner is sure that your rism and soup-shops began to rea

exist

wer

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