Project Gutenberg's The Paper Moneys of Europe, by Francis W. Hirst

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Title: The Paper Moneys of Europe
Their Moral and Economic Significance

Author: Francis W. Hirst

Release Date: July 23, 2009 [EBook #29499]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE PAPER MONEYS OF EUROPE

THEIR MORAL AND ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE

By

FRANCIS W. HIRST

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY THE REGENTS OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

BARBARA WEINSTOCK
LECTURES ON THE MORALS OF TRADE

This series will contain essays by representative scholars and men of
affairs dealing with the various phases of the moral law in its bearing
on business life under the new economic order, first delivered at the
University of California on the Weinstock foundation.

THE PAPER MONEYS OF EUROPE

THEIR MORAL AND ECONOMIC SIGNIFICANCE

No more severe reflection could be passed upon the moral and political
capacity of the human species than this: Five thousand years after the
invention of _writing_, three thousand after the invention of _money_,
and (nearly) five hundred since the invention of _printing_,
governments all over the world are employing the third invention for
the purpose of debasing the second; thereby robbing millions of
innocent individuals of their property on a scale so extensive that
previous public confiscations of private property through the
adulteration of money--in ancient Rome, in Ireland under James the
Second, in Prussia during the Seven Years' War, in the American
colonies and the United States, in Portugal, in Greece, in various
republics of Central and South America, even the assignats of the
French Revolution--seem pigmy frauds in comparison with the present
vast inundation of counter