I. The Participants in the Controversy

The suspension of specie payments by the Bank of England in 1797, and the currency, exchange, and price phenomena which followed it, gave rise to a controversial literature of great extent and, on the whole, of surprisingly high quality. Until the resumption of specie payments was approaching, the general trend of prices and of prosperity was upward; but resumption was followed by a long and trying period of falling prices and of economic distress. The change in circumstances led to a marked difference in the distribution of emphasis on the issues involved, and, in a number of instances, to a sharp reversal of doctrinal position by participants in the controversies of both periods. It will be convenient, therefore, to deal separately with the literature of the earlier and the later periods, which can be distinguished as the inflation and deflation periods, respectively.

Of all the older controversies in the field of international trade theory, the inflation phase of the bullionist controversy has probably been most fully and competently canvassed by modern writers. But there is still room for a resurvey of the controversy.

The contemporary literature of the bullionist controversy is of great importance for the history of the theory of international trade in its monetary aspects. The germs at least of most of the current monetary theories are to be found in it. It embodies the first detailed analysis of the relationships between currency phenomena and international balances, exchange rates, and price levels, under both metallic and inconvertible paper currencies. Foreign exchange theory is carried substantially forward, and the theory of the mechanism of adjustment of international balances is advanced substantially beyond the stage at which it was left by Hume. There are also discussions of a truly pioneer character of the functions of a central bank in a complex credit economy with respect to the maintenance of international monetary equilibrium and of internal business stability.

The contemporary participants in the controversy arrayed themselves fairly sharply in two opposing groups: the “bullionists” or “anti-Restrictionists” on the one hand, who criticized the course of monetary events, and the “anti-bullionists” on the other hand, who defended the government and the Bank of England against the attacks of the bullionists. But as will be seen, there were important divergences of opinion within each group. The essential doctrines of the bullionists were expressed by a small group of writers, of whom Boyd, King, Thornton, Wheatley, and Horner, were most important, during the first period, 1801 to 1803, of marked premium on bullion and fall in the exchanges. Similar phenomena, even more marked in degree, in connection with the Bank of Ireland gave rise to a parliamentary inquiry and to the bullionist publications of John Leslie Foster, Henry Parnell, and Lord Lauderdale. The reappearance from 1809 on of a high premium on gold and a substantial fall in the exchanges gave rise to a flood of tracts and pamphlets, of which the most important on the bullionist side, in addition to the Report of the Bullion Committee of 1810, were the contributions of Ricardo, his first appearance in print as an economist, T. R. Malthus, Robert Mushet, and William Huskisson.

The most effective statements of the anti-bullionist position were in speeches in Parliament by Nicholas Vansittart and George Rose, and in tracts by Henry Boase, Bosanquet, Coutts Trotter, and J. C. Herries.

Ricardo made but few additions to the analysis of his predecessors, and, as will be shown later, on some important points he committed errors from which some of the earlier supporters of the bullionist position had been free. But the comprehensiveness and the force and skill of his exposition and the assurance and rigor of his reasoning made him at once the leading expositor of the bullionist position. It was largely through Ricardo's writings, moreover, that the bullionist doctrines exercised their influence on the subsequent century of monetary controversy. Special attention is given, therefore, to Ricardo's position in the following account of the bullionist controversy.