ABSTRACT
The last sentences of the previous chapter will, I am sensible, seem strange and strained to the reader. Just as one unfamiliar with the certain conclusions of Thorold Rogers’s research must have been tempted to dismiss the earlier chapters as perversely paradoxical, so, too, many readers will be inclined to say of Bishop Berkeley’s warnings concerning double-money that they are unreal and alarmist. “After all,” they will object, “the system perhaps was not theoretically the best. Perhaps it might have collapsed, but at least it did not collapse. We muddled through.”
