t financiers diversify systems of credit as they will, it _is_
nevertheless true, that every system of credit is a system of paper
money. Two experiments have already been had upon paper money; the one
in America, the other in France. In both those cases the whole capital
was emitted, and that whole capital, which in America was called
continental money, and in France assignats, appeared in circulation; the
consequence of which was, that the quantity became so enormous, and so
disproportioned to the quantity of population, and to the quantity' of
objects upon which it could be employed, that the market, if I may so
express it, was glutted with it, and the value of it fell. Between five
and six years determined the fate of those experiments. The same fate
would have happened to gold and silver, could gold and silver have been
issued in the same abundant manner that paper had been, and confined
within the country as paper money always is, by having no circulation
out of it; or, to speak on a larger scale, the same thing would happen
in the world, could the world be glutted with gold and silver, as
America and France have been with paper.

The English system differs from that of America and France in this one
particular, that its capital is kept out of sight; that is, it does
not appear in circulation. Were the whole capital of the national debt,
which at the time I write this is almost one hundred million pounds
sterling, to be emitted in assignats or bills, and that whole quantity
put into circulation, as was done in America and in France, those
English assignats, or bills, would soon sink in value as those of
America and France have done; and that in a greater degree, because
the quantity of them would be more disproportioned to the quantity
of population in England, than was the case in either of the other two
countries. A nominal pound sterling in such bills would not be worth one
penny.

But though the English system, by thus keeping the capital out of sight,
is preserved from hasty destruction, as in the case of America and
France, it nevertheless approaches the same fate, and will arrive at it
with the same certainty, though by a slower progress. The difference
is altogether in the degree of speed by which the two systems approach
their fate, which, to speak in round numbers, is as twenty is to one;
that is, the English system, that of funding the capital instead of
issuing it, contained within itself a capacity o