An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain

Henry Thornton. An Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain (1802). Edited and introduced by Friedrich A. Hayek. London: Allen and Unwin, 1939.

Excerpt:

“To most of the contemporaries of Henry Thornton his authorship of the book which is now reprinted after one hundred and thirty-six years would by no means have been regarded as his major titles to fame. To them the fact that he was a successful banker and a great expert on finance probably appeared as the indispensable but comparatively uninteresting background which put him in the position to be a great philanthropist and the effective advocate of every good cause; certainly it enabled him to provide at his comfortable Clapham home the meeting place for the active and influential group of evangelicals, who, quite apart from the great role they played in their own time, were probably one of the most profound influences which fashioned the outlook and character that was typical of the English upper-middle-class in the nineteenth century.”

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