Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T15:20:23.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

III. Locke Versus Lowndes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

C. R. Fay
C. R. Fay
Affiliation:
Reader in Economic History in the University of Cambridge
Get access

Extract

There have been in England since 1600 three great monetary controversies. The first—and because of the place which it made for itself in literature, the most famous—was that between John Locke (1632–1704) and William Lowndes (1652–1724); the second arose over the Report of the Bullion Committee of 1810—for or against its adoption; the third was in the early eighteen-forties between the Currency and the Banking Schools. Locke, the Bullion Committee and the Currency School won. Lowndes’ proposal was rejected: the resumption of cash payments was decided upon in 1819: Peel's Bank Act of 1844 was a triumph for the Currency School. In each case the cause of “sound” money prevailed.

Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , 1933 , pp. 143 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1933

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The page references are to Lowndes, Essay [for the Amendment of the Silver Coins (1695)], and to Locke, Further Considerations [concerning the raising the value of money wherein Mr Lowndes’ arguments for it in his late report concerning “An Essay” etc., are particularly examined (1695), and edition of 1696].

2 A. E. Feavearyear, The Pound Sterling, p. 131, in quoting this estimate, adds, “There seems to be no doubt that at least another million of loss fell upon the holders of clipped coin, mostly the poorer people.”

3 Select Tracts illustrative of English Monetary History (1896), p. 117.

4 R. Cantillon, Essai sur la Nature du Commerce (ed. Higgs), p. 282.

5 It is not suggested that Newton's action in 1717 placed England on the gold standard: but only that his action, instead of obstructing, favoured the operation of powerful forces tending in that direction.

6 Locke also wrote, shortly before his reply to Lowndes, a pamphlet entitled “Short observations on a Printed Paper, entitled, For encouraging the coining silver money n England, and after for keeping it there.” The tenour is indicated by its concluding sentence, “If the exportation of bullion should be brought under any greater difficulty than of any other commodity, it is to be considered whether the management of that trade, which is in skilful hands, will not thereupon be so ordered, as to divert it from coming to England for the future, and cause it to be sent from Spain, directly to those places, where they know English debts will make it turn to that account, to answer bills of exchange sent thither.” In the collected works the pamphlet is reprinted as an appendix to the Considerations of 1691, e.g. 4th ed. of 1740, vol. II, pp. 60–6. (See B. Rand, Correspondence [of John Locke and Edward Clarke (1927)], Biographical Study, p. 45.)

7 Further Considerations, p. 29.

8 Ibid. p. 35. He supported his tract by letters to political friends in London, which “in all these matters of money gives a rule to all England,” urging a campaign for the refusal of clipped money by men “of weight” in the City. He was suspicious of the goldsmiths. But “if the Bank of England could be brought to receive and give out clipped money as bullion by weight it would be a mighty stroke towards it.” (Locke to the College, 6 April 1696—B. Rand, Correspondence, pp. 457–8.)

9 Further Correspondence, p. 36.

10 Further Considerations, p. 79.

11 Report of the Bullion Committee of 1810, Cannan's Reprint, p. 38.

12 The first two volumes were published in 1848 four years after the triumph of sound money (notes for gold and gold for notes) in Peel's Bank Act of 1844.

13 Feavearyear, A. E., The Pound Sterling (1931), pp. 127–32.Google Scholar

14 Wealth of Nations, ed. Cannan, I, 338.

15 The substance of the letter was reproduced in Bowring's Edition of Bentham's Works, 1838 et seq.—in III, 51 n. and x, 176—from which, presumably, Macaulay got it.

16 Cf. Eliot, T. D., The Relations between Adam Smith and Benjamin Franklin (New York), 1924.Google Scholar