An Essay on Money and Bullion

Thomas Joplin (1790?1847) was an English timber merchant and banker who published his Essay on the General Principles and Present Practices of Banking in England and Scotland, which attracted considerable notice. It launched a strong attack on the monopoly position of the Bank of England and proposed the setting up of joint stock banks. These ideas were subsequently taken up to a certain extent in the system initiated in 1828. In his book Thomas Joplin and Classical Economics (1993), D.P. O'Brien shows that Joplin was well ahead of his time in his use of formal models and empirically tested predictions. Unfortunately Joplin's own banking ventures brought him very little profit, and he died in relative obscurity, with his later writings largely ignored. Among his writings was his Essay on Money and Bullion. The Bullionist debate (with slight differences) re-emerged in the 1840s and 1850s after the Banking Act of 1844 gave the Bank of England a monopoly on note issue. While not requiring convertibility, the Bank of England was required to maintain a specific par between note issue and gold reserves held at the Bank. Supporting the Banking Act was the so-called "Currency School". They argued that there needed to be a maximum amount of note issue (which the gold standard provided) or else inflation would result. They thus resurrected the Bullionist arguments of a few decades earlier. The Currency School was led by Lord Overstone and counted among its proponents Thomas Joplin.