Necker receives a sort of friendly
reprimand from the President of the Assembly.
As to their other schemes of taxation, it is impossible to say anything
of them with certainty, because they have not yet had their operation;
but nobody is so sanguine as to imagine they will fill up any
perceptible part of the wide gaping breach which their incapacity has
made in their revenues. At present the state of their treasury sinks
every day more and more in cash, and swells more and more in fictitious
representation. When so little within or without is now found but paper,
the representative not of opulence, but of want, the creature not of
credit, but of power, they imagine that our flourishing state in England
is owing to that bank-paper, and not the bank-paper to the flourishing
condition of our commerce, to the solidity of our credit, and to the
total exclusion of all idea of power from any part of the transaction.
They forget that in England not one shilling of paper money of any
description is received but of choice,--that the whole has had its
origin in cash actually deposited,--and that it is convertible at
pleasure, in an instant, and without the smallest loss, into cash again.
Our paper is of value in commerce, because in law it is of none. It is
powerful on 'Change, because in Westminster Hall it is impotent. In
payment of a debt of twenty shillings a creditor may refuse all the
paper of the Bank of England.
Pages:
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612