The Only True, Intelligible Standard

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the monetary consequences for Britain and Ireland of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, beginning with the financial crisis triggered by the declaration of war in 1792 and the bigger crisis of 1797, which triggered the ‘bank restriction’, a twenty-four-year period when the Banks of England and Ireland were prevented from giving gold for their notes, and circulated low-denomination notes for the first time. This episode occasioned the ‘bullion debates’, which concerned not only the economic management of money but also the nature of monetary justice and its relationship to national honour and patriotism, as well as the proper distribution of power between the Bank and the state. The chapter carefully differentiates the operation of the bank restriction in England, Scotland, and Ireland, while also recovering common people’s experience of the bank restriction. The chapter challenges the idea—based on the propaganda of supporters of a speedy return to circulating gold, such as William Cobbett and Lord Peter King—that the common people’s monetary experience in this period was wholly negative and created an enduring hostility to paper money. Instead, it shows that a silver recoinage in 1817 did much to alleviate the centuries-old scarcity of small money in England and Scotland, although not Ireland. Conversely, the return to the gold standard exacerbated the severe economic stress of the post-war depression. Despite this, politicians and other members of the elite refused to revisit the decision, partly on grounds of national ‘honour’.