Page:The Real Cause of the High Price of Gold Bullion.djvu/3



Question to be decided upon the REPORT of the Committees of the two Houses of Parliament, seems of the greatest Importance to the Empire that was ever agitated upon a financial subject.

The imposing upon the Bank a Restriction in 1797, suspending Cash Payments, was not an act of deliberation and choice, but of irresistible necessity. The measures now to be taken are to be the result, not of necessity, but of mature deliberation; to be founded on the principles, not of temporary expediency, but of permanent policy.

It seems, that whatever shape the discussion may take, whatever faces it may present, whatever schemes it may open, the decision must be ultimately formed on one of the two following principles.

1.—Either that the amount of our circulation is to be measured by its adequacy to all the wants, demands, and interests of the Kingdom, arising from the whole of its income taken in the most extended sense, and that a system is to be ever acted upon for keeping its amount fully adequate to all these purposes;—or,

2.—That a system of contracting our Currency is to be acted upon for the sole purpose of bringing gold