Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/126

118, whenever anything is made, either by the decrees of government or the usages of society, to take the place of the precious metals as money. Paper, in the shape of bank-bills, promising to pay money on demand, is the most frequent, because the most cheap and convenient substitute; accordingly, when convertible paper-money is increased, it raises prices, and when it is diminished, it depresses prices, just as in the case of a metallic currency. But there are these two signal points of distinction between a paper and a metallic currency: first, that paper money may be increased or diminished much more easily than metallic money; and, second, that any excess or deficiency of the former is not so easily corrected by the natural operations of trade. The sudden or large increase of the metals is prevented by their scarcity and the laborious processes necessary to produce them, and a sudden or large decrease of them could be brought about only by some great public calamity which should destroy them or cause them to be hoarded. But paper money, whether made by a government or made by authorized corporations, may be issued and put in circulation almost at will, and again be withdrawn at will. We do not mean that the issue and withdrawal of it are wholly unchecked, but that the checks, as the entire history of banking would seem to prove, are comparatively inefficient and delusive. If the rise and fall of prices, caused by the fluctuations of metallic money, are to be compared to the rise and fall of the tides, the rise and fall of paper prices are more like the increase and decrease of steam in a boiler, which is an admirable agent, but demanding an incessant and scientific control. The sea-tides, even after a tempest, will regulate themselves, because they have all the oceans and all the rivers of the globe to draw upon; but the steam in a boiler is a thing confined, and yet capable of immense and destructive expansion. A metallic currency runs from nation to nation, and has its perturbations corrected from nation to nation; but a paper currency is local, and cannot be so well corrected by the great interchanges of the globe. Let us make this clearer in another way.

4. It is universally conceded, by all the writers on finance, that any unusual production of currency occasions a rise of prices; the relative value of money is less than it was before, while the relative value of other articles is greater; a greater quantity of money is given for other articles, and fewer of other articles are given for the same amount of money. This rise has the double effect of provoking the importation of foreign commodities, and of preventing the exportation of domestic commodities; inasmuch as the same enhancement of rates, which opens a good domestic market for the former, closes the foreign market to the latter; and thus an unfavorable balance accumulates rapidly against the country where the rise occurs, in respect to other countries where it has not occurred. Now sooner or later this balance must be paid; and as products cannot be profitably shipped abroad to furnish a fund whereupon to draw bills of exchange, it must be paid in coin. The coin is therefore abstracted from circulation; and if coin were the only currency, such an abstraction would of itself induce a fall of prices, which would operate as a check upon importations until the old relation of equilibrium should be restored. But where the government, or where individuals, whether organized or alone, have the power to replace the departed coin by issues of paper money, prices are for a while maintained, and importations continued as vigorously as ever. All this, however, is but a postponement of the day of settlement. The balance to be extinguished is a substantial balance, which can be discharged only by substantial means; a mere promise to pay, a mere sign and representative of debt, will not extinguish it, any more than the smell of a cook-shop will extinguish a ravenous appetite. The insatiable creditor will have