Exciting the Industry of the Irish: Bishop Berkeley’s Philosophy of Money

This chapter discusses Berkeley’s monetary theory, as developed in The Querist, focusing on the political crisis and the political project that motivated it as well as its sharp contrast with the philosophy of money of Locke and Hume. Further, this chapter argues that in advocating a monetary policy that would stimulate the industry of the Irish workers and promote capitalist development in Ireland, Berkeley rejected a metallist, “substantial” conception of money, which Locke had defended as an essential condition for participation in the world market. The chapter also highlights the “modernity” of both Berkeley’s call for the minting of paper money, whose functioning he had appreciated while living among the colonists of New England, and his associated belief that, for an underdeveloped country such as Ireland, participation in the world market would be nothing but catastrophic. Finally, the chapter stresses the power of the query, the rhetorical form of Berkeley’s argumentation, clearly intended to deflect institutional retribution, at a time when the identification of money with gold, for the English government at least, was an almost religious tenet.