_President Steel_, Lawrence University: “The conventional unit of lineal measure must not be a line which averages a foot, though it may be fourteen inches to-day and nine inches to-morrow; for the same reason it is desirable that the unit of value should have the same purchasing power next week as it has now.”
_Prof. Francis Wayland_ (“Elements of Political Economy,” page 297): “If there is more money in a country than is needed for its exchanges, the price of goods is raised and it is sent abroad for new purchases. If there is a scarcity of money in a country, the price of goods declines, and money comes in from other lands to be exchanged for them.” Page 298: “If money is abundant because business is stagnant and exchanges are few, it is a sign of adversity rather than of prosperity.”
_Edwards Pierpont_ (_North American Review_): “When currency is small it is always easy for a few lords of corporations and rich money-lenders to combine and lock it up, and thus throw down the price of stocks, wheat, cotton and other commodities, and work a corner on the currency. Thus the market is made tight and extortion easy.”
_John Sheldon_ (_New England Yale Review_, March, 1890): “This is of supreme importance, for prices tend to carry with the amount and not simply with the kind of legal-tender money in circulation. The greater the amount the higher the range of prices; the less the circulation the lower the prices. Prices tend ever to follow up and down the amount of legal-tender money in circulation; they do not tend to fixity of the particular kind of money or standard used.”
_Alexander Baring_ (before the committee, House of Lords, 1819): “The reduction of paper would produce all those effects which arise from reduction in the amount of money in any country.”
_Sir Robert Peel_ (May 6, 1844, speaking of the act to regulate the currency): “There is no contract, public or private, no engagement, national or individual, which is unaffected by this.”
_Lord George Bentinck_ (Parliamentary Debates, about 1847): “Of all the subtle devices which the wit of man has contrived to despoil the community of their property, nothing equals the contrivance of laws which limits the currency to gold.”