Ny 
PREFACE 
but many journalists and even a few economists, 
actually contended that the Currency Note issue, 
made under a purely permissive Act of Parliament, 
was uncontrollable by any authority or human 
being, or at the least that it could not be checked 
without making the Bank of England bankrupt. 
““ People constantly speak,” said one of them, “as 
though the issue of currency notes were somehow 
within the power of the Treasury to regulate. But 
surely this is not so. Anyone who has a balance at 
the Bank of England can turn it into currency notes 
ad lib. How is he to be stopped ? The Bank was 
supposed to have an incurable diarrhcea of pounds, 
though she had never suffered from that disease 
before the laxative of the Currency and Bank Notes 
Act, 1914, was administered to her. 
The House of Commons Select Committee on 
National Expenditure, after hearing the Treasury 
on the subject, declared in its Second Report, “Notes 
are not issued in order to make Government pay- 
ments,” without making the slightest attempt to 
explain how the Government managed to get rid of 
the proceeds of the issue without paying them away. 
All this made me think it desirable to add to my 
Wealth a chapter containing the elementary principles 
on which the value or purchasing power of money 
depends, but the exposition turned out longer than 
[ expected, so that it seemed better to publish it 
separately. This, unaltered except for a few unim- 
portant corrections and some excisions or amend- 
ments of allusions to states of things no longer exist- 
ing, forms Part I of the present edition.