9. On the supposed Evils of a depreciated Currency to our Foreign Trade. See p. 150.

The charge, that paper currency has a tendency to diminish the foreign vent for our manufactures, by raising the price of labour, and thus raising the price of the commodity, seems to me quite unfounded. Let us see how it operates. If it raises prices, it certainly stimulates the increase of the manufacture to a very great extent, by facilitating the exchange between food and labour; ́and thus continues to add, in a multiplying ratio, to the positive wealth of the country.

Suppose a scanty, or impeded circulation, in which a labourer finds employ three days in a week, at a subsistence of a loaf and half of bread a day ;—and that he is supported in idleness the other four days at a similar expenditure: the total cost is ten loaves and a half;-then suppose him, by a more plentiful circulation, employed six days, at two loaves a day; the cost is fourteen loaves. This is little more than an addition of a third; while the additional gain in labour is double.

Now so far as the exchanges with foreign countries are in goods, this is in no degree counteracted by a depreciated currency at home; so far as it is a balance in money, it is at any rate a payment for a clear gain to the country, and the gain in quantity from the additional motion of human labour, caused by the impulse of liberal circulation, must be far greater than could arise from an undepreciated currency received in payment for a much smaller quantity of goods.

USURY

EXPLAINED;

OR

CONSCIENCE QUIETED IN THE CASE

OF

PUTTING OUT MONY AT INTEREST.

BY PHILOPENES.

London: Printed by D. E. in Fetter-Lane, 169%.

REPRINTED

LONDON, 1817.

THE

PRINTER

TO THE

COURTEOUS READER.

GENTLE Reader, in compliance with my calling, I present thee with a small Treatise, upon the Case of Putting out Mony at Use, the subject is of a publick concern, and the Press is ordered to the publick good. Written papers, are like spirits, appear to some, and not to others, and often prove illusions. The publick eye is the quickest and the surest in discerning good, from evil.

The Author who writ, what I now print, is no farther known to me, than by the name of Philopenes, a lover of poverty, or a friend of the poor. If he be, what his name implies, the fitter he is, to discourse impartially a point, in which reason alone can concern him; I hope he will not take it in evil part, that I set forth for some small advantage, what for more than a year, has past through several hands; that were to blame his own judgment, in letting it be seen by so many, or to give suspicion of some dark design: by avoiding the publick.

If what he writes be true, 'tis one of those truths, which ought not to be concealed, nor hidden under the bushel; that were envious. If erroneous, not to secure error by discovery, that were uncharitable. If he fears truth may displease some, he might as well desire to put out all light, as offensive to weaker sights, unuseful to the blind, and unacceptable to such, as wilfully shut their eyes.

The book is but short, well if it be clear; short as it is, Divines, Lawyers, and all concerned in Mony; may find in it somewhat for their turns. Be it what it will, take it for what it is: the print is only mine, and may be thine, too at a small charge, Farewell.

PART I.

AS TO THE LAW OF NATURE.

CHAP. I.

The case considered as to the Nature of Mony.

ARISTOTLE defining liberality, to be a vertue moderating the love of mony, and prompting to spend, by the dictates of reason, under the name of mony, comprehends all things prized by mony, as the standing measure of their worth. The present Discourse admits not of so much latitude, but confines it solely, to the being the measure of valuation, and price of wares; so becoming the common instrument of sales and purchases, the soul of traffick, and the life of markets.

As to its origin, not over noble, I find it to have been the child of want, though since become the parent of abundance. When all other creatures bearing different coins, issued out of the Mint, if I may be so bold to say, of nothing: no mony appeared, which perchance may have been a reason, why the serpent bribed our first parents to rebellion, not with mony, but ambition, and plea

sure.

All other beings had God for their Creator, mony, as to its form, was the creature of man, and that only after his fall, being multiplied upon earth; divisions of property then entered the world, from whence sprung a necessity of commerce; first, by bartering one thing for another. In success of time, trade improving, a current measure, for the price of things, was judged requisit, and therefore settled by each superior, in his respective dominion, and admitted by communities. So that, as the first intercourse of trade, was entertained by exchange of one thing for another, mony became the vicar, as it were, of all things, and by