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ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

a survival of the conditions of an earlier age),to employ them otherwise. 1

As in other respects, so also in this, the nine-teenth century relied on the future permanenceof its own happy experiences and disregardedthe warning of past misfortunes. It chose toforget that there is no historical warrant forexpecting money to be represented even by aconstant quantity of a particular metal, far lessby a constant purchasing power. Yet Money is simply that which the State declares fromtime to time to be a good legal discharge ofmoney contracts. In 1914 gold had not beenthe English standard for a century or the solestandard of any other country for half a century.There is no record of a prolonged war or agreat social upheaval which has not been ac-companied by a change in the legal tender, butan almost unbroken chronicle in every countrywhich has a history, back to the earliest dawnof economic record, of a progressive deteriora-tion in the real value of the successive legaltenders which have represented money.

Moreover, this progressive deterioration inthe value of money through history is not anaccident, and has had behind it two great driv-ing forces—the impecuniosity of Governmentsand the superior political influence of the debtorclass.

The power of taxation by currency deprecia-

1 German trustees were not released from a similar obligationuntil 1923, by which date the value of trust funds invested in titlesto money had entirely disappeared.