GRENVILLE'S WAR AND POST-WAR VIEWS ON MONEY IN EARLY 19 th -CENTURY BRITAIN

The main monetary issue in Britain during the early 19th-century war with France was about prolonging the suspension of the convertibility of the Bank of England note, which had been decided in 1797. Amidst a difficult return to a peacetime economy it would also be the main issue in the post-war period, since it would take six years after Waterloo before the pre-war monetary situation was re-enacted. During more than two decades, Lord Grenville's views on the monetary system did not change. They were mostly centred on two aspects. First, the suspension of cash payments of its notes by the Bank of England was a calamity: justified at the outset as a temporary measure of necessity, it should not be prolonged year after year, even in time of war. Second, the substitution of country banks' notes for coins which had taken place all over England outside the London area was a threat to economic and social stability. These unflagging views did not prevent Grenville from advocating gradualism in what was to be implemented in order to return to a sound monetary system – that is, one endowed with a metallic standard thanks to the convertibility of the Bank of England note into coin and to the pre-eminence of specie in the country circulation. This mixture of monetary orthodoxy and gradualism led Grenville in 1819 to support Ricardo's novel plan for convertibility into bullion, provided it was understood as a temporary scheme aiming at facilitating the resumption of convertibility into coin. It also led him in the 1820s to resist the pressures in favour of the return to a double standard (gold and silver). Based on Grenville's speeches in Parliament and on private correspondence, the present paper is a contribution to the special session "Money, Finance and Trade at War. The case of early nineteenth-century Britain".