CASH AND ECONOMIC CHANGE 979
opposition he declined to employ the intriguing idea of replacing the entire money
supply to force the speculators to turn their cash back to the marketplace.
Despite his own initial disdain for the proposal to supplement copper cash
with silver cUlTency, he seriously entertained discussion of the idea because
quite a few officials thought the supply of silver was sufficient to justify a bimetal-
lic currency system - a view that was quite feasible despite the cessation of
Japanese silver exports to Korea after 1752. The Chinese experience with sil-
ver was cited as a useful precedent for bimetallism, but it was dismissed rather
cursorily because China had a plentiful supply of copper cash to begin with,
and only the wealthy elite used silver for their transactions. Importing silver
from Japan and the production of Korean silver mines were discussed as well,
but no action was taken to pursue these alternatives.
Yongjo was ostensibly open to a variety of opinion about policy alternatives,
and he did not actively attempt to restrict the growth of commerce or the role
played by merchants in the economy because he believed that the government
had a moral responsibility to stay out of any profit-making venture in competi-
tion with merchants. He was forced to concede that he did have a public duty
as a benevolent ruler to intervene in the circulation of cash to eliminate any imbal-
ance or destabilization of prices, interest rates, and taxes, but his powerful prej-
udice against cash yielded only slowly to arguments for a more positive role in
expanding the money supply. He was skittish about the prospects of using any
form of cheap money, whether paper money or multiple-denomination cash,
because he was fearful that it would cause inflation, and even after he reluc-
tantly agreed to mint more cash in 173 I, he placed a severe brake on the devel-
opment of the cash or nonagricultural economy by holding down the money
supply. This conservative fear of inflation was also characteristic of Yu
Hyongwon's ideas as well.
Unfortunately, Yongjo's policy deflated commodity prices by maintaining a
high value of cash and dampened opportunities for investment in nonagricul-
tural industries by keeping interest rates high as well. He never believed that it
was his duty to promote industrial or nonagricultural production for the bene-
fit of the people or the national economy as a whole, and he was by no means
a mercantilist monarch who sought to increase national wealth against other
national rivals. On the contrary, he was fearful that foreign trade might lead to
foreign domination, particularly if Korea became dependent on Ch'ing China
for imports of cash, or Tokugawa Japan for imports of copper ore.
Since the peasants were desperate for loans to tide them over the spring plant-
ing season or the vicissitudes of flood or famine, YOngjo's tight money policy
must have increased the burdens on the peasantry by adding high interest costs
and heavier cash taxes to an increasingly regressive tax system, remedied only
partially by a 50 percent cut in the military service tax under the equal service
tax reform (kYllIlW'5kp6p) in 1750. After a brief conversion of some cash taxes
to cotton prior to 173 I , optional payment of military support taxes in cash was