Page:The Real Cause of the High Price of Gold Bullion.djvu/35

, retrench it; but if it is actually deficient near a half in comparison with the proportion of other times, let us not add to the evil and pressure of the existing deficiency, and act as if we resented the detection of false views and bad logic.

Above all, I deprecate a starving system, which has already produced great distress, lowered our funds, augments the necessary amount of the loan, increases its interest, and which has thrown a gloom over our affairs, and spread an universal terror in the market.

Having drawn my observations to a close, I beg leave to suggest that possibly it is not necessary to make a decided choice between the two alternatives which I stated in the outset, but to act in unison with them both. To regulate on the one hand the amounts of the circulation, by the wants of the income of the country taken in its most extended sense; and to support its value, by controlling it by the market price of Gold, properly regulated.

We must recollect, that controlling our currency by the mint price, or by the market price, must equally produce fluctuations in amount and fluctuations of price. Steadiness is merely nominal: standards will vary as the articles vary to which they are standards, though nominally they may appear invariable. The shore seems to recede whilst the vessel sails away: but whether the shore or the vessel be fixed, the variation in distance will be the same.

Let us also recollect, that if we were to regulate the amount of our currency in Coin and Bank Notes, by the proportion of currency to taxes and income, which existed in 1790, our currency now, if measured by taxes, ought to exceed 100 millions, and if measured by income, 90 millions. So much for the excess of our present currency. Let