A stunning copy, uncut in the original wrappers, of the exceedingly scarce true first edition of “probably the most famous public document in the history of economics” (Fetter, p. 152). Described in Sraffa as the “original official edition”, the present example is one of a small number of copies printed in folio for official use in August 1810, preceding the publicly available trade edition printed in octavo format on 23 September 1810.
In February 1810, the House of Commons set up the Select Committee on the High Price of Gold Bullion, to investigate why the price of gold had risen since the Bank of England had ceased convertibility of its bank notes with the introduction of the Bank Restriction Act of 1797, which initiated a nineteen-year period during which the British economy worked on a fiat currency system of paper money, with the price of gold bullion soon coming to demand a premium.
The select committee was chaired by Francis Horner, with other particularly noteworthy members including Henry Thornton, Pascoe Grenfell, William Huskisson, and Sir Henry Parnell, amongst others. Evidence was given by the Governor of the Bank of England and the Clerk of its Bullion Office, Nathan Mayer Rothschild, alongside brokers, refiners, exchange dealers and merchants, with their testimonies printed in the appendix.
The Committee concluded that the Bank, released from the obligation of paying gold against notes, had printed them in excess. As a result, there was “an excess in the paper circulation. This excess is to be ascribed to the want of a sufficient check and control in the issue of paper from the Bank of England; and originally to the suspension of cash payments, which removed the natural and true control” (p. 73 of Report). The Committee urged the Bank to resume specie payments at the earliest possible date, a resumption that did not occur until 1821.
The fame of the Report “must be explained not on the basis of logic [the Report itself is a clumsy rehashing of old doctrines, in the opinion of its Chairman], but in terms of economics as part of the living fabric of political life. It brought forcibly into public attention a great issue of economic policy, and it gave the prestige of a Parliamentary Committee to the view that the money supply is an importance influence on money and on exchange rates. Even for many who might disagree with some of the analysis it became a symbol of the view that a central bank should pay attention to the monetary circulation if prices were to be restrained and exchange stability maintained” (Fetter, p. 152).
The Bullion Report is typically linked with the name of David Ricardo. Although Ricardo was not a member of the committee, and the question of his influence remains widely disputed, he certainly was the single most important advocate of the Report’s findings in the heated debates that followed.
The present folio edition of the Report was published as a government ‘blue book’ as part of Vol. III of Parliamentary Papers for 1810 (Order 349). An account of the slight textual variances between the folio and octavo editions is given in the preface to the 1925 second edition of Cannan’s The Paper Pound.
See: Frank Whitson Fetter, ‘The Editions of the Bullion Report’, Economica; Edwin Cannan (ed.), The Paper Pound of 1797-1821: The Bullion Report 8th June 1810, second edition, 1925.
Sraffa, 2131.
