ridden; they are so fractious and intractable, that, put
whom you will upon their back, he is thrown, and invent what snaffle or
breaking-bit you may, they will not be held to an equable or moderate
pace. And of this sort, judging by the past attempts, is Paper Money.
All the ingenuity and efforts of the most skillful trainers of the Old
World, and of the most cunning jockeys of the New, have been tasked in
vain to devise an effective discipline and curb for this impatient colt.
Paper Money either refuses to be ridden, and runs rampant away, or, if
any one succeed in mounting him for a time, he performs a journey like
that which Don Quixote took on the back of the famous Cavalino, or
Winged Horse. In imagination he ascended to the enchanted regions,--but
in reality he was only dragged through alternate gusts of fire and of
cold winds, to find the horse himself, in the end, a mere depository of
squibs and crackers.

Paper money has been issued, for the most part, on the one or the other
of two conditions, namely: as irredeemable, when it has been made to
rest on the vague obligation of some government to pay it some time or
other in property; or as convertible into gold and silver on demand. But
under both conditions it seems to have been impossible to preserve it
from excess and consequent depreciation. Nothing would appear to be
safer and sounder, on the face of it, than a money-obligation backed by
all the responsibility and property of a government; and yet we do not
recall a single instance in which an irredeemable government-money has
been issued, where it did not sooner or later swamp the government
beyond all hope of its redemption. No virtue of statesmanship is proof
against the temptation of creating money at will. Even where there has
been a nominal convertibility on demand of the bills of government
banks, they have worked badly in practice. In 1637, for instance, the
monarch of Sweden established the Bank of Stockholm; yet in a little
while its issues amounted to forty-eight millions of roubles, and their
depreciation to ninety-six per cent. In 1736, Denmark created the Bank
of Copenhagen; but within nine years from its foundation it suspended
redemptions altogether, and its notes were depreciated forty-six
per cent. We need not refer to the extraordinary issues of French
_assignats_, or of American continental money,--nor to the deluges
of paper which have fallen upon Russia and Austria. During all these
e