PAPER PRICES 
105 
sources. Some persons unversed in the art of public 
finance as now practised, which consists in overlaying 
simple facts with accounts which make them unintelli- 
gible, have been puzzled because they cannot find 
the three hundred millions raised by the issue of the 
fiduciary Currency Notes anywhere in the national 
accounts for the years 1914 to 1919. The explanation 
is that the Currency Note Account was treated as a 
“ Government Department ”’ able to lend money to 
the Exchequer. So the millions which came in from 
the issue of notes, so far as they were not absorbed 
by the gold, bank-notes and silver coin which were 
stored away in cellars and appeared in the weekly 
account, were advancad tc .he Exchequer either 
simply as * Government Department Ways and Means 
Advances ”’ (of which they formed a proportion so 
substantial that the Government always refused 
to disclose its amount) or by taking up Treasury 
Bills and other Government securities. The receipt 
was thus effectually hidden away by being mixed 
indistinguishably w'th money borrowed in the ordin- 
ary way or derived from the Savings Banks and 
other public and semi-public institutions. Hence- 
forward the Treasvrv was to deny itself this resource. 
(See Appendix I.) 
Our newspapers were fond of adjuring foreign 
governments which were inflicting increasing currency 
issues on their subjects to * balance their budgets.” 
The advice is defective in form, since all budgets, 
like other accounts, balance, unless, which is unlikely, 
they contain an arithmetical error. What is really 
wanted is that the budget, or rather the actual 
receipts and »=vments, should balance without the 
receipts incl. CL mg from tssie Sher money, 
and this is v© vas undertaken . i. Treasury 
when it issued lic Minute oi Decemwer ::, 1919. 
For a good many weeks the fruits of the undertaking 
yn