Page:Malthus 1823 The Measure of Value.djvu/80

 occur. Whenever it does occur, the natural value of bullion falls.

The observations here made, with a view to place the controversy respecting the alterations in the currency on its proper ground, and to make the necessary distinction between facts and the causes which may have produced them, apply still more strongly to the publication of Mr. Blake, in much of the reasoning of which I entirely concur. He proposes to prove that it was the gold which rose, and not the paper which fell during the war, although he acknowledges as a matter of fact, that almost all prices, including labour, rose not only in paper but in gold. This has, no doubt, the air of a contradiction, according to all the common modes of estimating the value of money; and it certainly is not removed by showing that the main cause of these high prices was a great demand compared with the supply of commodities—a cause which, involving as it always does, more transactions on credit, and a more rapid circulation