e same amount of these, much less money may be in
circulation at one time than another. There are various expedients and
substitutes for supplying a temporary deficiency of currency, which make
the quantity of money in a commercial country a variable one, capable of
considerable contraction or expansion. The actual money can be more or
less aided by credit. A farmer, a horse-dealer, a shopkeeper, a
mechanic--will all wait with a substantial purchaser for their money,
rather than lose the sale of their commodities; and a sudden rise in the
price of the staples of the country, such as our own often experience,
while it increases the demand for money, proportionally improves the
credit of individuals, and fits it as a substitute for cash. Money too
may be much more active at one time than another; and when there has
been a considerable increase of it, the greater comparative idleness of
a part of it, in the strong boxes or pocket-books of individuals, may
prevent or lessen its depreciation. These circumstances, and others
which might be added, all inappreciable except by approximations,
prevent the value of money from either rising or falling, in exact
proportion to its increase or decrease in quantity.

To this qualification of the general principle, we would add another.
When the money of a country has been considerably increased, and the
excess cannot be exported, as was the case with our paper currency
during the suspension of cash payments, the depreciation is much greater
upon some articles than others. Its effect is least upon those
commodities which find a market abroad, because the price there
regulates the price here. It is by reason of this irregularity that
depreciation is often so disguised as not to be perceptible to all, and
that sometimes it is a matter of dispute whether it exists or not; as
was the case in England in the controversy between the bullionists and
their opponents, concerning the fact of the depreciation of their bank
paper during the suspension of cash payments.

But if the increase of the currency has little effect on the prices of
some articles, it has the greater on those for the estimation of which
there is no such definite standard--as lands, town lots, and houses--and
those domestic products which look exclusively to domestic consumption
for a market, as butchers' meat, game, &c. All these took a prodigious
rise in all parts of the Union, and most men mistaking the effect of a
redundan