t he might have been sent to
Tyburn by a jury which Dudley North had packed. Intellectually, however,
there was much in common between the Tory and the Whig. They had
laboriously thought out, each for himself, a theory of political
economy, substantially the same with that which Adam Smith afterwards
expounded. Nay, in some respects the theory of Locke and North was more
complete and symmetrical than that of their illustrious successor. Adam
Smith has often been justly blamed for maintaining, in direct opposition
to all his own principles, that the rate of interest ought to be
regulated by the State; and he is the more blamable because, long before
he was born, both Locke and North had taught that it was as absurd to
make laws fixing the price of money as to make laws fixing the price of
cutlery or of broadcloth. [639]

Dudley North died in 1693. A short time before his death he published,
without his name, a small tract which contains a concise sketch of a
plan for the restoration of the currency. This plan appears to have been
substantially the same with that which was afterwards fully developed
and ably defended by Locke.

One question, which was doubtless the subject of many anxious
deliberations, was whether any thing should be done while the war
lasted. In whatever way the restoration of the coin might be effected,
great sacrifices must be made, the whole community or by a part of the
community. And to call for such sacrifices at a time when the nation was
already paying taxes such as, ten years before, no financier would have
thought it possible to raise, was undoubtedly a course full of danger.
Timorous politicians were for delay; but the deliberate conviction of
the great Whig leaders was that something must be hazarded, or that
every thing was lost. Montague, in particular, is said to have expressed
in strong language his determination to kill or cure. If indeed there
had been any hope that the evil would merely continue to be what it was,
it might have been wise to defer till the return of peace an experiment
which must severely try the strength of the body politic. But the evil
was one which daily made progress almost visible to the eye. There might
have been a recoinage in 1691 with half the risk which must be run
in 1696; and, great as would be the risk in 1696, that risk would be
doubled if the coinage were postponed till 1698.

Those politicians whose voice was for delay gave less trouble than
another