Our Monetary System, within Leader, vol. 8, issue 404

Our Monetary System, within Leader, vol. 8, issue 404

Bray, Charles

London: Open Court Publishing Co., 1857. Leader, vol. 8, issue 404, 1857-12-19. p. 1209

Internet Archive

1857

George Eliot to Charles Bray, 23 December 1857. “Thank you for sending me your pamphlet on the Currency. I have read your letter on the subject in the Leader, and so far as I am capable of judging, your views are the "sound" ones. But it has often appeared to me -- and your letter is, I think, open to a similar criticism -- that the opponents of the ‘gold-standard’ do not make it sufficiently clear to their readers that they presuppose, as a necessity, some guarantee such as government security, as a basis for confidence; so that the holder of a bag of cowries for example, where cowries are the circulating medium, should not be liable, some fine morning, to discover that his cowries will purchase him nothing. That contingency, so far as I am able to see, is the one stronghold of those who maintain that the circulating medium should have an intrinsic value, and therefore all the emphasis of argument and illustration should storm them at that point. But whether I am talking "sanity or insanity," as Carlyle says of himself, is a perfectly equal chance, on a subject of which I know so little.” GEL 2: 414-5

Bray, Charles, Our Monetary System, within Leader, vol. 8, issue 404, George Eliot's Reading, George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/57005

https://georgeeliotarchive.org/files/original/091191ecffb2ae16a26828d06c351196.pdf