t the paper will take the command in the beginning,
and gold and silver in the end.

But this succession in the command of gold and silver over paper, makes
a crisis far more eventful to the funding system than to any other
system upon which paper can be issued; for, strictly speaking, it is not
a crisis of danger but a symptom of death. It is a death-stroke to the
funding system. It is a revolution in the whole of its affairs.

If paper be issued without being funded upon interest, emissions of it
can be continued after the value of it separates from gold and silver,
as we have seen in the two cases of America and France. But the funding
system rests altogether upon the value of paper being equal to gold and
silver; which will be as long as the paper can continue carrying down
the value of gold and silver to the same level to which itself descends,
and no longer. But even in this state, that of descending equally
together, the minister, whoever he may be, will find himself beset with
accumulating difficulties; because the loans and taxes voted for the
service of each ensuing year will wither in his hands before the year
expires, or before they can be applied. This will force him to have
recourse to emissions of what are called exchequer and navy bills,
which, by still increasing the mass of paper in circulation, will drive
on the depreciation still more rapidly.

It ought to be known that taxes in England are not paid in gold
and silver, but in paper (bank notes). Every person who pays any
considerable quantity of taxes, such as maltsters, brewers, distillers,
(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 foregoi