Abstract
The ‘bullion controversy’ was a pamphlet debate about money, banking, and the standard of value prompted by the publication of the Report of the Select Committee on Bullion, better known as the Bullion Report, in June 1810 and lasting until the recommendations of that report were defeated in the House of Commons in May 1812.2 As the opening of The Bullion Debate: A Serio-Comic Poem (quoted above), published in 1811 by the Birmingham agricultural surveyor William Pitt, tells us, the bullion controversy involved an array of participants representing many theoretical and ideological perspectives.3 At least 800 pamphlets on the subject were published between 1797 and 1821, more than 100 between 1809 and 1812. Extend these dates to between 1790 and 1840 and the number is well over 1,000. Including articles, reviews, letters, speeches, and poems doubles it again to 2,000. Participants included bankers, accountants, merchants, lawyers, politicians, academics, and farmers. Some supported the suspension, others saw it as a catastrophe or had middling views. Many of their questions and concerns were practical in nature. Did a rise in the price of gold mean that money was ‘depreciated’? Did increases in banknotes cause inflation? But they also asked larger questions. How is the economy affected by war? How are paper and gold related? Is value determined by labor or desire? What about land? What is money anyway?
THE STANDARD
What must we for a standard own, By which the price of things are known? ’Twas thought, time past, by men of sense, ’Twas Guineas, Shillings, Pounds, and Pence; The Bank has said, and says so still, ’Tis nothing but a Paper Bill; ’Tis in Sir Francis Burdett’s head, The Standard is a Loaf of Bread, While Adam Smith did always say It was the Labour of a Day.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
William Pitt, The Bullion Controversy: A Serio-Comic Satiric Poem (London: Longman, 1811), 1.
Today, the term ‘bullion controversy’ often encompasses all monetary debates from the 1790s to the 1830s. I am using it to refer primarily to debates about money that preceded the 1816 coinage reform. The debates that followed this date tend to assume the theoretical if not practical necessity of the gold standard. See David Laidler, ‘The Bullion Controversy’, in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, ed. John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1987), 289–94.
John Wilson, ‘Political Economy: Essay II’, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 16 (1824): 40.
Edwin Cannan, The Paper Pound of 1797–1821: A Reprint of the Bullion Report (London: P. S. King, 1919).
Frank Fetter, Development of British Monetary Orthodoxy, 1797–1875 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), preface.
For a sociological perspective see John W. Houghton, Culture and Currency: Cultural Bias in Monetary Theory and Policy (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991)
Samuel Weber, Mass Mediarus: Form, Technics, Media (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 7.
William B. Warner, Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1684–1750 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 177–9.
On media interaction, or remediation, see Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, eds., Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001).
I borrow the term ‘media consciousness’ from Kevis Goodman, Georgic Modernity and British Romanticism: Poetry and the Mediation of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
For descriptions of the general euphoria in Britain about its global victories in 1759, see Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture, and Imperialism in England 1715–1785 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 197–8.
H. V. Bowen, ‘British Conceptions of Global Empire 1756–83’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 26 (1998): 1–27.
My account of this is based on Giovanni Arrighi’s The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origin of Our Times (London: Verso, 1994), 159–72.
The public sphere is not, then, a singular entity but a site of ‘cultural and ideological contest or negotiation among a variety of publics’. George Eley ‘Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century’, in Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. C. Calhoun (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 289–339 (290).
Stephen Turner, ‘What is the Problem with Experts?’ Social Studies of Science 31 (2001): 123–49
Stanley Fish in There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)
Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1979).
Harry Collins and Robert Evans, Rethinking Expertise (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 18.
Collins and Evans, Rethinking Expertise, 31. See also Evan Selinger and Robert Crease, eds., The Philosophy of Expertise (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).
As J. A. Downie describes it, what distinguishes the pamphlet is a combination of a ‘polemical objective’, including its awareness of the prejudices of readers confounded by ongoing debates, and its ability to transform that sense of discomfort into coherent ideals, to ‘give shape’ to’ shapeless anxieties’. See ‘Public Opinion and the Political Pamphlet’, in The Cambridge History of English Literature 1660–1780, ed. John Richetti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 549–71 (551). See also James Mulvihill, Upstart Talents: Rhetoric and the Career of Reason in English Romantic Discourse, 1790–1820 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004).
For a fuller discussion of Burke’s remarks on the loan see Dermot Ryan, ‘“A New Description of Empire”: Edmund Burke and the Regicide Republic of Letters’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 44 (2010): 1–19
Tom Furniss, Edmund Burke’s Aesthetic Ideology: Language, Gender, and Political Economy in Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Watchman No. II (Wednesday, March 9, 1796), in The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, vol. 2, ed. L. Patton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 56–66.
Andreas Michael Andreades, History of the Bank of England, 1640–1903 (London: Frank Cass, 1909), 200
Mark Schoenfield, British Periodicals and Romantic Identity: The ‘Literary Lower Empire’ (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 59.
Alexander Campbell, The Guinea Note, A Poem by Timothy Twig, Esquire (Edinburgh: A. Leslie, 1797), 2.
Walter Boyd, Letter to the Right Honourable William Pitt: On the Influence of the Stoppage of Issues in Specie at the Bank of England: on the Prices of Provisions and other Commodities (London: Wright, 1801), 3.
See P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas: I. The Old Colonial System 1688–1850’, Economic History Review 39 (1986): 501–25.
Sir Francis Baring, Observations on the Publication of Walter Boyd (London: Debrett, 1801).
Charles Jenkinson, A Treatise on the Coins of the Realm: In a Letter to the King (London: J. J. W Birch and Je. R. Grenfell, 1880), 352–3
On ‘mixing’ as a precondition for the emergence of Romanticism, see Clifford Siskin, The Historicity of Romantic Discourse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
It is also possible that Horner and his fellow Whigs took the high price of gold as an opportunity to undermine Tory fiscal policy and grip on power. See Kenneth Bourne and William Banks Taylor, eds., The Horner Papers: Selections from the Letters and Miscellaneous Writings of Francis Horner MP., 1795–1817 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 570.
Cited in Biancamaria Fontana, Rethinking the Politics of Consumer Society: The Edinburgh Review, 1802–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 123.
Sir James Steuart, Principles of Banks and Banking as Coin and Paper with the Consequences of Any Excessive Issue on the National Currency, Course of Exchange, Price of Provisions, Commodities, and Fixed Incomes (London: J. Davies, 1810).
William Huskisson, The Question Concerning the Depreciation of Our Currency Stated and Examined (London: Murray, 1810), iii.
See Nathan Sussman, ‘William Huskisson and the Bullion Controversy, 1810’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 4 (1997): 237–57.
See for instance Peter Carey, A Letter to William Huskisson, M.P. On His Late Publication (London: Richardson, 1811).
John Hill, An Inquiry into the Causes of the Present High Price of Gold Bullion in England and Its Connection with the State of Foreign Exchanges, with Observations on the Report of the Bullion Committee: In a Series of Letters Addressed to Thomas Thompson, Esq. M.P., One of the Members of the Bullion Committee (London: Longman 1810), 86.
William Kingsman, Letter to the Right Honourable Sir John Sinclair, Bart. (author of the History of the Revenue, and other fugitive pieces) on the subject of his remarks on Mr. Huskisson’s pamphlet, 2nd edn. (London: J. Ridgway, 1811), 23.
[George Canning and George Ellis], ‘Sir John Sinclair’s Remarks’, Quarterly Review 5 (1811): 120–38.
[George Ellis], ‘Huskisson, on the Depreciation of Currency’, Quarterly Review 4 (1810): 453.
My account of Lowe is drawn from Benjamin Christie Nangle, The Monthly Review Second Series, 1790–1815: Index of Contributors and Articles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), 38–39.
[Joseph Lowe], ‘Ricardo, Grenfell, Mushet, Sir P. Francis, and others on the Depreciation of Banknotes’, Monthly Review 63 (1810): 182.
[Joseph Lowe], ‘Monthly Catalogue: Politics’, Monthly Review 63 (1810): 435.
[Joseph Lowe], ‘Huskisson on the Depreciation of Our Currency’, Monthly Review 63 (1810): 413.
[Joseph Lowe], ‘Blake’s Observations on the State of the Exchange’, Monthly Review 64 (1811): 1.
[Joseph Lowe], ‘Ricardo, Grenfell, Mushet, Sir P. Francis, and others on the Depreciation of Banknotes’, Monthly Review 63 (1810): 180.
[Joseph Lowe], ‘Sir John Sinclair’s Observation on the Report of the Bullion Committee’, Monthly Review 63 (1810): 288.
[Joseph Lowe], ‘On the Report of the Bullion Committee’, Monthly Review 63 (1810): 464.
Brougham, Horner, and Jeffrey were members of the Speculative Society, ‘the most famous of the University clubs’, where young men honed their rhetorical skill on current affairs. See Leslie Hunter, The Scottish Education System (Oxford: Pergamon, 1968), 209–12
J. V. Smith, ‘Reflections on the Popular Enlightenment of Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland’, in Walter M. Huens and Hamish M. Paterson, eds., Scottish Culture and Scottish Education, 1800–1900 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1983), 28–30.
Jerome Christensen, ‘The Dark Romanticism of the Edinburgh Review’, in Romanticism at the End of History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 107–28
Ian Duncan, ‘Edinburgh, Capital of the Nineteenth Century’, in Romantic Metropolis: The Urban Scene of British Culture, 1780–1840, ed. James Chandler and Kevin Gilmartin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 45–64
Henry Thornton, An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (London: Hatchard, 1802).
See Antoin E. Murphy, ‘Paper Credit and the Multi-Personae Mr. Henry Thornton’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 10 (2003): 429–53 (431-2)
S. Meacham, Henry Thornton of Clapham, 1760–1815 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964)
E. M. Forster, Marianne Thornton (London: A. Deutsch, 2000), Ch. 1.
For summaries of Thornton’s position see F. A. von Hayek, ‘Introduction’ to An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1939), 11–65
D. A. Reisman, ‘Henry Thornton and Classical Monetary Economics’, Oxford Economic Papers New Series 23 (1971): 70–89.
Francis Horner, ‘Thornton on the Paper Credit of Great Britain’, Edinburgh Review 1 (1802): 172–201 (188).
Homer, ‘Lord King’s Thoughts on the Restriction of Payments’, Edinburgh Review 3 (1804): 402–21 (403).
David Ricardo, The High Price of Bullion (London: Murray, 1810), 55.
Tomas Robert Malthus, Works of Thomas Robert Malthus, Volume 2: An Essay on the Principle of Population, ed. E. A. Wrigley and David Souden (London: Pickering, 1986), 16.
Thomas Robert Malthus, ‘Depreciation of Paper Currency’, Edinburgh Review 17 (1811): 339–72
[Francis Jeffrey], ‘Madame de Stael, De La Littéérature’, Edinburgh Review 21 (1813): 1–50.
Joseph Hume, Thoughts on the New Coinage with Reflections on Money and Coins and a New System of Coins and Weights on a Simple and Uniform Principle (London: Stockdale, 1816), 26.
Ronald K. Hutch and Paul R. Ziegler, Joseph Hume: The People’s MP (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1986).
David Ricardo, Proposal for an Economical and Secure Currency (London, 1816) in The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, vol. 4, ed. Piero Sraffa and M. H. Dobb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951–73), 43–142.
J. R. McCulloch, ‘Economical and Secure Cunency’, Edinburgh Review 21 (1818): 54–79.
S. G. Checkland, ‘The Propagation of Ricardian Economics in England’, Economica 16 (1949): 40–52
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Alexander Dick
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dick, A. (2013). The Bullion Controversy. In: Romanticism and the Gold Standard. Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137292926_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137292926_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45100-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-29292-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)