 | A discourse concerning paper money: in which its principles are laid open; and a method, plain and easy, for introducing and
continuing a plenty, without lessening the present value of it, is demonstrated. |  |
The historical circumstances that led Franklin to publish his pamphlet are described in detail in Richard A. Lester's book, Monetary Experiments Early American and Recent Scandanavian, Chapter III, "Currency Issues to Overcome Depressions in Pennsylvania, 1723 and 1729," Princeton University Press, 1939, pp. 56-111.
John Webbe dismissed Franklin's theory in a pamphlet "A Discourse Concerning Paper Money," published in Philadelphia in 1743. The relevant passage follows.
For a modern version of Franklin's theory, see Theodore Thayer, "The Land Bank System in the American Colonies," Journal of Economic History vol XIII (1953), pp. 145-59, or Bruce Smith, "American Colonial Monetary Regimes: The Failure of the Quantity Theory and Some Evidence in Favor of an Alternate View," in The Canadian Journal of Economics, vol 18 (1985), pp. 531-64.
For a critique of the theory, see Ron Michener, "Fixed Exchange Rates and the Quantity Theory in Colonial America," in The Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, vol 27 (1987), pp. 233-308.
| A discourse concerning paper money: in which its principles are laid open; and a method, plain and easy, for introducing and
continuing a plenty, without lessening the present value of it, is demonstrated. | |