stillers,
(I appeal for the truth of it, to any of the collectors of excise in
England, or to Mr. White-bread,)(1) knows this to be the case. There is
not gold and silver enough in the nation to pay the taxes in coin, as
I shall show; and consequently there is not money enough in the bank to
pay the notes. The interest of the national funded debt is paid at the
bank in the same kind of paper in which the taxes are collected. When
people find, as they will find, a reservedness among each other in
giving gold and silver for bank notes, or the least preference for the
former over the latter, they will go for payment to the bank, where they
have a right to go. They will do this as a measure of prudence, each one
for himself, and the truth or delusion of the funding system will then
be proved.

1 An eminent Member of Parliament.--_Editor._.

I have said in the foregoing paragraph that there is not gold and silver
enough in the nation to pay the taxes in coin, and consequently that
there cannot be enough in the bank to pay the notes. As I do not choose
to rest anything upon assertion, I appeal for the truth of this to the
publications of Mr. Eden (now called Lord Auckland) and George Chalmers,
Secretary to the Board of Trade and Plantation, of which Jenkinson (now
Lord Hawkesbury) is president.(1) (These sort of folks change their
names so often that it is as difficult to know them as it is to know
a thief.) Chalmers gives the quantity of gold and silver coin from the
returns of coinage at the Mint; and after deducting for the light gold
recoined, says that the amount of gold and silver coined is about twenty
millions. He had better not have proved this, especially if he had
reflected that _public credit is suspicion asleep_. The quantity is much
too little.

1 Concerning Chalmers and Hawkesbury see vol. ii., p. 533.
Also, preface to my "Life of Paine", xvi., and other
passages.---_Editor._.

Of this twenty millions (which is not a fourth part of the quantity of
gold and silver there is in France, as is shown in Mr. Neckar's Treatise
on the Administration of the Finances) three millions at least must be
supposed to be in Ireland, some in Scotland, and in the West Indies,
Newfoundland, &c. The quantity therefore in England cannot be more than
sixteen millions, which is four millions less than the amount of the
taxes. But admitting that there are sixteen millions, not more than
a fourth part thereof (f