or
society, by help of an issue of false money (or false promises) by way
of stimulants; and the fruit of this work, if it comes into the
promiser's hands, may sometimes enable the false promises at last to be
fulfilled: hence the frequent issue of false money by governments and
banks, and the not unfrequent escapes from the natural and proper
consequences of such false issues, so as to cause a confused conception
in most people's minds of what money really is. I am not sure whether
some quantity of such false issue may not really be permissible in a
nation, accurately proportioned to the minimum average produce of the
labour it excites; but all such procedures are more or less unsound;
and the notion of unlimited issue of currency is simply one of the
absurdest and most monstrous that ever came into disjointed human wits.

150. The use of objects of real or supposed value for currency, as gold,
jewellery, etc., is barbarous; and it always expresses either the
measure of the distrust in the society of its own government, or the
proportion of distrustful or barbarous nations with whom it has to deal.
A metal not easily corroded or imitated, it is a desirable medium of
currency for the sake of cleanliness and convenience, but, were it
possible to prevent forgery, the more worthless the metal itself, the
better. The use of worthless media, unrestrained by the use of valuable
media, has always hitherto involved, and is therefore supposed to
involve necessarily, unlimited, or at least improperly extended, issue;
but we might as well suppose that a man must necessarily issue unlimited
promises because his words cost nothing. Intercourse with foreign
nations must, indeed, for ages yet to come, at the world's present rate
of progress, be carried on by valuable currencies; but such
transactions are nothing more than forms of barter. The gold used at
present as a currency is not, in point of fact, currency at all, but the
real property[21] which the currency gives claim to, stamped to measure
its quantity, and mingling with the real currency occasionally by
barter.

151. The evils necessarily resulting from the use of baseless currencies
have been terribly illustrated while these sheets have been passing
through the press; I have not had time to examine the various conditions
of dishonest or absurd trading which have led to the late 'panic' in
America and England; this only I know, that no merchant deserving the
name ought