ng 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 (four millions) can be in London, when it is
considered that every city, town, village, and farm-house in the nation
must have a part of it, and that all the great manufactories, which most
require cash, are out of London. Of this four millions in London, every
banker, merchant, tradesman, in short every individual, must have some.
He must be a poor shopkeeper indeed, who has not a few guineas in his
till. The quantity of cash therefore in the bank can never, on the
evidence of circumstances, be so much as two millions; most probably
not more than one million; and on this slender twig, always liable to be
broken, hangs the whole funding system of four hundred millions, besides
many millions in bank notes. The sum in the bank is not sufficient to
pay one-fourth of only one year's interest of the national debt, were
the creditors to demand payment in cash, or demand cash for