Hard Money for the sake of it

Conrad Black has a confusing article that is allegedly about the economics of bubbles. In the piece he unwittingly undermines his own hard money ideas:

An examination of the writing of a British 18th Century author such as Dr. Johnson, and a writer from 100 years later, such as Charles Dickens, reveals that there was no increase in that time in the cost of a loaf of bread or the rental of a simple but respectable residential room in London. There were soaring economic bubbles and bone-cracking depressions, and prices followed supply and demand, but the essential currency value was constant. Unfortunately, that would change

Its nice that if a young British chap was strolling down Fleet Street in the 18th century with a few pence in his pocket and looking for a bite to eat and he accidentally walked into a time machine sending him forward 100 years he would still be able to afford the same items. But its hard to imagine that level of price stability is really worth the "bone-cracking depressions". Certainly a more sane public policy would aim to utilize control over the money supply to alleviate those depressions. Also, here are a list the countries he believes to be "hard currency" ones:

The remaining hard-currency countries are limited to Canada, Australia, Singapore, the bloc of German and Baltic countries, the Dutch, Poles and Czechs.

I don't even really know how to go about evaluating that statement.