Mark Sillitoe

“As nineteenth-century economist David Ricardo noted, “neither a State nor a bank ever has had the unrestricted power of issuing paper money, without abusing that power; in all States, therefore, the issue of paper money ought to be under some check and control; and none seems so proper as that of subjecting the issuers of paper money to the obligation of paying their notes, either in gold coin or in bullion.”4 Throughout the Victorian era, the gold standard imposed the needed discipline on politicians.”
― Jack Weatherford, The History of Money