nk, and
which explains itself no otherways than by a continual increase in bank
notes. Without, therefore, entering into any further details of the
various contrivances by which bank notes are issued, and thrown upon the
public, I proceed, as I before mentioned, to offer an estimate on the
total quantity of bank notes in circulation.

However disposed governments may be to wring money by taxes from the
people, there is a limit to the practice established by the nature of
things. That limit is the proportion between the quantity of money in a
nation, be that quantity what it may, and the greatest quantity of taxes
that can be raised upon it. People have other uses for money besides
paying taxes; and it is only a proportional part of the money they can
spare for taxes, as it is only a proportional part they can spare
for house-rent, for clothing, or for any other particular use. These
proportions find out and establish themselves; and that with such
exactness, that if any one part exceeds its proportion, all the other
parts feel it.

Before the invention of paper money (bank notes,) there was no other
money in the nation than gold and silver, and the greatest quantity of
money that was ever raised in taxes during that period never exceeded a
fourth part of the quantity of money in the nation. It was high taxing
when it came to this point. The taxes in the time of William III. never
reached to four millions before the invention of paper, and the quantity
of money in the nation at that time was estimated to be about sixteen
millions. The same proportions established themselves in France. There
was no paper money in France before the present revolution, and the
taxes were collected in gold and silver money. The highest quantity of
taxes never exceeded twenty-two millions sterling; and the quantity of
gold and silver money in the nation at the same time, as stated by M.
Neckar, from returns of coinage at the Mint, in his Treatise on the
Administration of the Finances, was about ninety millions sterling. To
go beyond this limit of a fourth part, in England, they were obliged to
introduce paper money; and the attempt to go beyond it in France, where
paper could not be introduced, broke up the government. This proportion,
therefore, of a fourth part, is the limit which the thing establishes
for itself, be the quantity of money in a nation more or less.

The amount of taxes in England at this time is full twenty millions;
and