of Ricardo, which Lord Overstone and Co. pressed into their service and made a fundamental principle of Sir Robert Peele’s Bank legislation of 1844
What should have been proven was that the price of commodities or the value of gold depends on the quantity of gold in circulation. The proof consists in the assumption of what is to be proven, viz. that any quantity of the precious metal employed as money must become a medium of circulation or coin, and thereby a token of value for the commodities in circulation, no matter in what proportion to its own intrinsic value and no matter what the total value of those commodities may be. To put it differently, the proof consists in overlooking all the other functions which money performs besides its function of a medium of circulation. When hard pressed, as in his controversy with Bosanquet, Ricardo, completely under the influence of the phenomenon of depreciated tokens of value caused by their quality, takes recourse to dogmatic assurances.138
If Ricardo had built up this theory by abstract reasoning, as we have done it here, without introducing concrete facts and incidental matters