Note 362 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

In 1876, when Mr. Lindsay first set out his scheme in the pages of his Calcutta Review, he mentions no parallel at all. In 1892, in his Ricardo's Exchange Remedy, he uttered the name of Ricardo as an authority for his plan, but in 1898 he shifted his ground, so much so that he blamed (Economic Journal, supra) Probyn for taking Ricardo's gold-bar plan as a basis. The reason why he disavowed Ricardo as his authority most probably lies in the fact that Ricardo's general views of currency were rather damaging to his position. In view of the fact that there are so many people who assert, no doubt, from the title of his Proposals for an Economical and Secure Currency, that Ricardo wrote against a metallic standard, it is worth while recording the following passage from his Proposals, in which he says: “During the late discussion on the bullion questions, it was almost justly contended that a currency, to be perfect, should be absolutely invariable in value. But it was said, too, that ours had become such a currency, by the Bank Restriction Bill; for by that bill we had wisely discarded gold and silver as the standard of our money … Those who supported this opinion did not see that such a currency, instead of being variable, was subject to the greatest variations—that the only use of a standard is to regulate the quantity, and by the quantity the value of the currency—and that without a standard it would be exposed to all the fluctuations to which the ignorance or the interests of the issuers might subject it.”