ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the overall socio-economic and political setting of the (sub)period, undertaken with the view of recontextualizing the specific points of debate and controversy. It considers the period which saw the emergence of monetary theory in debate concerning Irish currency circa 1797 to 1803. Francis Horner tried to clarify Henry Thornton’s analysis of the causal sequence in the relationship between currency and commodity price variations. Thornton was at pains to stress the importance of the velocity of circulation. Thornton’s analysis of the mechanisms of the banking and monetary system was open to interpretive flexibility, but its mode—empirical complexity wherein the specific details of each case were examined in minutiae—was characteristically anti-bullionist in 1802. Thornton’s work was somewhat equivocal as regards analytical content, but stylistically it was clearly anti-bullionist. Thornton’s Paper Credit was quite favorably reviewed by Horner in the first issue of the newly founded Edinburgh Review.
