ON

THE COST OF

OBTAINING MONEY,

AND ON SOME EFFECTS OF

PRIVATE AND GOVERNMENT PAPER MONEY;

DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,

IN TRINITY TERM, 1829.

BY NASSAU WILLIAM SENIOR, A.M.

LATE FELLOW OF MAG. COL., PROF. OF POLITICAL ECON.

LO NDON:

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET.

MDCCCXXX.

LONDON:

Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Stamford Street.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE statute by which the Professorship of Political Economy was founded, requires the Professor to publish a Lecture every year. In compliance with this requisition, I have selected, from the course delivered in June 1829, the portion which appeared to me least unfit for separate publication. As a fragment it is necessarily imperfect: my apology for presenting it to the Public is, the necessity imposed on me by the statute.

N. W. SENIOR.

Lincoln's Inn, January 15, 1830.

LECTURE I.

ON THE COST OF OBTAINING MONEY. -36

THE
average annual wages of labour in Hindostan
are from one pound to two pounds troy of silver
a year. In England they are from nine pounds.
to fifteen pounds troy. In Upper Canada and
the United States of America, they are from
twelve pounds troy to twenty pounds. Within
the same time the American labourer obtains
twelve times, and the English labourer nine
times as much silver as the Hindoo.

The difference in the cost of obtaining silver, or, in other words, in the wages of labour in silver, in different countries at the same period has attracted attention, though not perhaps so much as it deserves, and various theories have been proposed to account for it.

B