annum compounded. The money of the United States, though not without frequent and injurious, if not dangerous, fluctuations, appears to have augmented at the rate of about thirty-three per mille per annum.1 Another determinable quantity to which the actual increase of money appears to have conformed is the net rate of interest for money. This quantity is not so readily nor easily determinable as the increase of population; nevertheless it is determinable. The net rate of interest means the average actual or market rate of interest, less risk, taxes, and the cost of the superintendence of loans. This rate in the United States has been and is still about thirty-three per mille per annum. Without as yet assuming that these indications offer a practical solution to so difficult a problem, let it be supposed that the money of the United States, instead of being left, as it has been, to alternately expand or contract with the commercial movements of bullion, the paper emissions of banks and treasuries, the exigencies of governments, and the contentions of party, had been regulated to augment at the rate of thirty-three per mille per annum-then these results would have followed : 1. The country would have had, all along, substantially the same amount of money that it has had; only, instead of alternately increasing and diminishing, in some years to more than half the extent of its previous volume, it would have augmented steadily at the rate of 33 per cent. per annum. 1 Consult the author's "History of Precious Metals," pp. 214-17. 2. The reckless inflations, speculations, and dishonest transactions of 1814, 1819, 1829, 1837, 1857, and 1864 would not have occurred. 3. The contractions and stringencies that followed these eras would not have been occasioned. 4. Nor would it have been necessary to legalise the disgraceful repudiations, nor to pass the stay-laws and bankruptcy Acts which were enacted to relieve the distresses occasioned by these contractions, and into which innocent and honourable men were drawn, together with the designing and dishonourable. Though the character of these advantages does not rank them among the most important which such a system would have brought about, yet surely even these are worthy of attention. To secure to each class of persons in a state the uninterrupted and peaceful enjoyment of their industrial condition, should certainly form an object of desire to statesmen. To discourage recklessness or dishonesty; to visit upon the labouring and indebted classes no unnecessary nor peculiar hardships; to incur no reproach of pecuniary turpitude; to hold out no inducements to fraudulent bankrupts; to let no rascal through meshes of the law which are strong enough to bind the innocent,—these are ends which no progressive community can long afford to disregard or neglect. INDEX. Bacon, Lord, engages in a mining enter- Bank-cheques, comparative use of, in I 2 Bankruptcy laws, operation of, in Rome, Buenos Ayres, inconvertible note system Bullion, when to be classed as money, 55. California, exhaustion of its placer Cernuschi, M. Henry, cited, 49. Cheques, bank, comparative use of, in China, monetary systems of, 31. 22. laws by the New York, 21; system Commodity moneys, 16, 17; influences Composite moneys, 17, 18, 28; influ- ences upon value of, 113. 44. Contractions of money injurious to trade further extending, viii. Counterfeiting practised or connived at 44. Counterfeit notes, 39; lessening pro- portion of to counterfeit coins, 43. Credit curtailed through use of unlimited Crescendo and diminuendo prices, 91. Currency, ambiguity of the term, 8; Decay of monetary conceptions, 3, 61. Deposits, bank. See Bank-deposits. Discovery of America, influence of, 6. 47. Dollar, gold, weight and fineness of, 55. Dollars, numerous varieties of, in the England. See United Kingdom. land. England, rate of interest in, 99, 107. Equity, as established by value, 68; Evolution of words, 1, 60. Exchanges, analysis of, 102; their re- Exchequer notes, 17, 26. Feudal conception of money, 4, 6, 8. Foresight, its commercial value reduced, 92. France, its assignats and mandats coun- 24. Function of money, the, is to measure Funding notes, 17, 27. George, Henry, cited, 98. Greenback notes of the United States, Genesis, anachronism in English version Gold. See Precious metals. Greece, ancient, monetary systems of, 31. Hale, Sir Matthew, cited, 6. 92. Hume, David, cited, 80. Hydraulic or placer mining forbidden in California, viii. Illimitable money, illiterate suggestion Inconvertible moneys, 17, 18, 27. Interest, market rate of, to what due, 95; ultimate cause of, the rate of the Mahomet, influence of, upon Europe, 5 Measures, when precise, are always arti- Mercantile system, influence upon mone- |