In proportion to the advantage to the moral and worldly condition of the working classes of having a secure place of deposit where their savings might gather interest, was the injury then resulting from the disappointment of their confidence. Savings-banks now exist to obviate all excuse for improvidence on the plea of the difficulty of finding a secure method of investment, or place of deposit: but at the period when this crash took place, savings-banks were not established; and then was the time for the idle and wasteful to mock at the provident for having bestowed his labour and care in vain, and for too many of the latter class to give up as hopeless the attempt to improve their condition, since they found that their confidence had been abused, and their interests betrayed. There were not so great a number of working-people who suffered by the forfeiture of their deposits as by holding the notes of the unsound banks, because few banks received very small deposits; but such as there were belonged to the meritorious class who had been cheated in Haleham by Cavendish. They were the Chapmans, the Rhodas,—the industrious and thrifty, who ought to have been the most scrupulously dealt with, but whose little store was the very means of exposing them to the rapacity of sharpers, and of needy traders in capital whose credit was tottering.
After the pause which one day succeeded the relation of some melancholy news brought by Mr. Craig to the Berkeleys, Melea wondered whether other countries ever suffered from the state of their currency as England was now suffering, or whether foreign governments had long ago learned wisdom from our mistakes.
Her father replied by telling her that the Bank of Copenhagen had been privileged, before the middle of the last century, to issue inconvertible paper money; that the king, wishing to monopolize the advantage of making money so easily, had some years afterwards taken the concern into his own hands; and that, at the present moment, his people were wishing him joy of his undertaking, a dollar in silver being worth just sixteen dollars in paper.
“How very strange it seems,” observed Melea, “that none of these governments appear to see that the value of all money depends on its proportion to commodities; and the value of gold and paper money on their proportion to each other.”[other.”]
“Catherine of Russia seems to have had some idea of it,”[it,”] observed Mr. Berkeley, “for she was very moderate in her paper issues for some time after she gave her subjects that kind of currency: but at this time, the same denomination of money is worth four times as much in metals as in paper. Maria Theresa went wrong from the first. Presently after she introduced paper money into Austria, a silver florin was worth thirteen florins in paper. All the subsequent attempts of that government to mend the matter have failed. It has called in the old paper, and put out fresh; yet the proportionate value of the two kinds of currency is now eight to one. But the most incredible thing is that any government should institute a representative currency which, in fact, represents nothing.”
“Represents nothing! How is that possible?”
“Ask your mother to tell you the history of the Assignâts. I know it is painful to her to recur to that terrible time; but she will think, as I do, that you ought to be aware what were the consequences of the most extraordinary currency the world ever saw.”
Mr. Craig could now account for Mrs. Berkeley’s gravity whenever the subject of a vicious currency was touched upon in the remotest manner. He supposed she had suffered from family misfortunes at the time when all France was plunged into poverty by the explosion of the assignât system.
“How could a representative currency actually represent nothing?” inquired Melea again.
“The assignâts were declared legal money,” replied Mrs. Berkeley, “but there was nothing specified which they could represent. Their form was notes bearing the inscription ‘National Property Assignât of 100 francs.’ The question was first, what was meant by national property; and next, what determined the value of 100 francs.”