Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/449

Rh the consequence is certain. No art, no skill, no power can prevent their falling to a discount. I do not speak upon conjecture, the thing is matter of experience. A fever is as much a fever in London as in Paris or Amsterdam; and the consequence of stoppage of payment must be the same in whatever country it happens. The fall will be slow perhaps, and gradual for a time; but it will be certain. A few months may bring to the recollection of your Lordships with contrition the prophecy that I have now made to you." He also dwelt with great force on the evils which would infallibly arise from the gigantic system of forgery of paper money, which would be sure to spring into existence, and from the general rise of prices which would ensue.

His fears on the subject of forgery were at once fulfilled, and although his prophecy on the depreciation of the value of bank notes did not come true "within a few months," owing to the skill with which the issue of the inconvertible paper was managed, yet within a few years his apprehensions were fulfilled. The day was to come when a Chancellor of the Exchequer was to rise in his place in the House of Commons and boldly maintain, that bank paper must be as good as gold, and a new school of currency-mongers asserted that a metallic circulation was only worthy of a primitive state of civilisation.

The successes of the Imperial army in Germany in 1796 led to negotiations, but the English Envoy, Lord Malmesbury, found the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, M. Delacroix, quite as much elated by the successes of Bonaparte's first campaign in Italy, as depressed by the victories of the Archduke Charles. He refused to listen to the English demand for the evacuation of the Netherlands, and the war continued. During these negotiations Lord Lansdowne was accused of having secretly gone over to Paris in order to suggest to the French Ministers that they should insinuate in England that peace would be far more easily obtained, if he had the direction of affairs instead of Pitt.