THE EVILS INSEPARABLE

4

FROM A

MIXED CURRENCY,

AND THE

ADVANTAGES TO BE SECURED

BY INTRODUCING

AN INCONVERTIBLE NATIONAL PAPER

CIRCULATION,

THROUGHOUT THE

British Empire and its Dependencies,

UNDER PROPER REGULATIONS.

AN ESSAY

BY WILLIAM BLACKER, Esq.

Second Edition.

LONDON:

PELHAM RICHARDSON, 23, CORNHILL.

[Two Shillings.]

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

THE ruin produced in the United States of America by the financial measures of the Federal Government, and the fatal effects of those measures upon the Commercial and Manufacturing interests of Great Britain and Ireland, have been too recently and too severely felt, not to have impressed the thinking part of the community with an anxious desire to ascertain in what way it might be possible, most effectually to guard against the future recurrence of similar calamity.

any

The object, therefore, of the following Essay is, first, to prove that a mixed currency of paper and specie must, of necessity, always render us liable to external influences, from which even a purely metallic currency could not at all times entirely keep us free; secondly, (in recommending the abandonment of a metallic basis as the most certain guarantee

for our future safety,) to make it plainly appear that the evils formerly found to arise from an inconvertible paper currency were occasioned by the injudicious provisions of the Bank Restriction Act, and not from any defect inherent in the nature of a paper circulating medium; and, thirdly, that a return thereto, under proper regulations, is essential to the well-being of the British Empire, and would be attended with almost incalculable advantage to its power, prosperity, and public revenue.

In advancing doctrines so very much at variance with the prevailing opinions of the present day, the writer most respectfully lays claim to that impartial and attentive consideration of the arguments advanced which the national importance of the subject is so justly entitled to demand.