10 



immense cost of the campaign in Portugal, and the importa- 

 tion of one million five hundred thousand quarters of wheat, 

 to supply the deficiences of a bad harvest in 1810, had occa- 

 sioned so great a dearth of specie in Great Britain in the latter 

 year, that gold and silver had almost disappeared from the cir- 

 culation ; and a light guinea was worth twenty- five, aud some- 

 times as much as twenty-seven shillings. But what then ? 

 The Banks increased their issue in a similar proportion ; that 

 of the Bank of England was raised to twenty- eight millions ; 

 its discounts reached twenty millions in a single year. All 

 other Banks did the same ; and, by this means, not only was 

 the crisis surmounted without difficulty, but a hundred thou- 

 sand combatants and forty ships of the line were assembled 

 round Lisbon, which hurled back the French from the lines of 

 Torres Vedras. A commercial and monetary crisis which, 

 beyond all question under our present system, would have in- 

 volved the nation and all the commercial interests in a general 

 public and private bankruptcy, was not only surmounted with- 

 out distress, but the property of the industrious classes was 

 unimpared during its whole continuance ; and the nation com- 

 menced in the middle of it, those gigantic efforts which at 

 length turned the tide against France, and brought the contest 

 to a glorious termination. It is remarkable that this admira- 

 ble system, which may be truly called the MOVING POWER OF THE 

 NATION during the war, became towards its close, the object of the 

 most determined hostility on the part both of the great capitalists 

 and chief writers on political economy in the country. Here, 

 however, as everywhere else, EXPERIENCE, THE GREAT TEST OF 



TRUTH, HAS DETERMINED THE QUESTION. The adoption of 



the opposite system of contracting the paper in proportion to 

 the abstraction of the metallic currency, by the Acts of 1819 

 and 1844, (followed as it was necessarily by the monetary 

 crises of 1825, .1839, and 1847) has demonstrated beyond a 

 doubt that it was in the system of an expansive currency that 

 Great Britain during the war found the sole means of its sal- 

 vation." Alison's History of Europe, vol. xx. p. 79, 80. 



And moreover, the fact that from 1797 to 1815, commerce, 

 agriculture, and wealth advanced (in spite of all the evils of war) 

 with a rapidity greater than they had previously done in cen- 

 turies, proves still further the power of Paper Money, to in* 



