2651페이지 중 865페이지

In 1751 and 1752, when Mr Hume published his Political

Discourses, and soon after the great multiplication of paper

money in Scotland, there was a very sensible rise in the price of

provisions, owing, probably, to the badness of the seasons, and

not to the multiplication of paper money.

It would be otherwise, indeed, with a paper money, consisting in

promissory notes, of which the immediate payment depended, in any

respect, either upon the good will of those who issued them, or

upon a condition which the holder of the notes might not always

have it in his power to fulfil, or of which the payment was not

exigible till after a certain number of years, and which, in the

mean time, bore no interest. Such a paper money would, no doubt,

fall more or less below the value of gold and silver, according

as the difficulty or uncertainty of obtaining immediate payment

was supposed to be greater or less, or according to the greater

or less distance of time at which payment was exigible.