William Douglass Quotes
To make a Bill or Note bearing no Interest, and not payable till after a dozen or score of Years, a legal Tender … in Payment of Debts, is the highest of despotick and arbitrary Government
William Douglass, 1691-1752, Colonial Economist & Scholar, Discourse on the Currencies of the American Plantations, 1740
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What Franklin Delano Roosevelt began, President Nixon would in 1971 complete by removing America from the gold standard entirely and ending fixed rates of exchange. There have been those in government who did not understand the modern economics of money and who believed that currency had to have a fixed rate of exchange for gold or silver otherwise it was worthless. Roosevelt had to deal with them as did Nixon later. Even into the 21st century when it had been amply demonstrated that the best currency in the world was the United States dollar precisely because it was backed up by the full faith and credit of the United States Government, there were those who complain that United States money is not sound currency and argue for the return of the gold standard.
At the time, a bank note—paper money issued be a private bank—was not backed by any gold or silver and was not insured bym the government. A bank could print as much as they wanted, so it was always worth less as the further you were from the particular issuing bank, the less you could get your bank note, because no one knew whether or not the issuing bank would redeem the note or even be in existence. So every private bank note had diminished value for the public. However, carrying gold and silver around and making change for precious metals was difficult and often impractical. So people used banknotes. The same thing happens with credit cards today. The merchant has to pay a fee to the credit card company and the bank and therefore charges us more for whatever we buy. But most consumers and merchants are willing to pay the difference to obtain the convenience of the credit card,
This frequent Jefferson quotation almost certainly was never written or uttered by him but was probably created by later opponents of private banks. It has never been verified from any studies of Jefferson’s prolific writings. Further the word ‘inflation” came into use in the 1860s and ‘deflation’ seems to have first been used in the 1920s. However, some ascribe it to a letter Jefferson wrote to Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin in 1802.
Conservatives are surprised to learn that their great economic nemesis was one of the early economists who saw the danger of paper money and government control over the minting of money which is one of their core concerns.
At the time any private bank could issue their own money. Private sector bankers thought it outrageous that the Congress should consider trampling on their rights to issue money. The solution that was finally adopted some years later was to use the Federal Reserve Board to control the money supply. It is independent of the Congress and the President but members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Our system, like no other system, is a compromise where neither the Government or the Private Sector controls the American money supply.
The alternative would have been for the colonies to borrow English money at high interest rates and use that. Or use money from private banks (which occurred later.) Many conservatives are today a little shocked that some of the American Colonies just printed money with no backing but it worked—at least at the local level. A Boston Bank for example, would take a large commission for a Bostonian to convert Pennsylvania money into Massachusetts money. So it was not a very good system for trade between colonies and International trade. But English money was used for that. The colonists pragmatically got the “best of both worlds” and paid as little interest as they needed to. This system is essentially what we use today on a national scale with no gold or silver backing of the money.
William Douglass (c. 1691–1752) was a physician in 18th-century Boston, Massachusetts, who wrote pamphlets on medicine, economics and politics that were often polemical.
