We have ourselves experienced
some portion of the misery it creates; but by a return to sounder
principles, have happily escaped the destruction and ruin which
always attends the completion of that career.
177. Every person in a civilized country requires, according
to his station in life, the use of a certain quantity of money,
to make the ordinary purchases of the articles which he consumes.
The same individual pieces of coin, it is true, circulate again
and again, in the same district: the identical piece of silver,
received by the workman on Saturday night, passing through the
hands of the butcher, the baker, and the small tradesman, is,
perhaps, given by the latter to the manufacturer in exchange for
his check, and is again paid into the hands of the workman at the
end of the succeeding week. Any deficiency in this supply of
money is attended with considerable inconvenience to all parties.
If it be only in the smaller coins, the first effect is a
difficulty in procuring small change; then a disposition in the
shopkeepers to refuse change unless a purchase to a certain
amount be made; and, finally, a premium in money will be given
for changing the larger denominations of coin.
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