The Lancashire Bill System and Its Liverpool Protagonists, 1810-1827

For the most part the merchants of Liverpool, in the monetary debate that began around 1809 and revived with new vigour after 1815, were to be numbered among the supporters of the Bank of England in its resistance to the return to gold at the oldparity, and among the opponents of the bullionist school of Horner, Ricardo, Huskisson, and the rest. It is of some interest to study how this came about, for each commercial community is to some degree at least peculiar to itself; the expanding port of Liverpool arrived at its position in its own way. Local monetary discussion was both lively and sustained; the merchants circulated a number of memoranda among themselves, and considerable pamphlet literature came into being. Liverpool reacted strongly to the Bullion Report, manifesting early impatience with discussions which did not seem to start from the damage done to trade by the Orders in Counicil and the Berlin Decrees,2 but proceeding from about 1812 onward to inquire into the general principles appropriate to the national monetary system. There were three principal ingredients in the Liverpool attitude; to none of them did the bullionists pay much attention. They were: the typical concern of the trader with his own House and its solvency, the instability of the markets for primary products in which Liverpool so largely dealt, and an addiction to a particular mode of mutual accommodation-the Bill System. The Ricardians, both in their general reasoning and in their monetary theory, took little interest in the firm, but for the Liverpool merchant this was the starting point of economic thinking. All Liverpool, from the new and hazardous undertakings to the long established houses, was fearful of the effects of disorderly liquidation. Further, the local merchants, with their heavy dealings in wheat, cotton, sugar and tobacco, were exposed to liquidity crises for commodity as well as monetary reasons; governed by erratic

Art · Sociology · Historical Economic and Social Studies

• Inland Bills of Exchange

  Open Access•Gary Gorton•Explorations in Economic History•2024

  Add to list