42 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



other fine mats, and in many places ornaments and the materials for 

 ornaments: which last, gold and silver, being relatively portable, 

 passed into wide use. These precious metals were at first in quanti- 

 ties actually weighed; then in quantities of professed weight; and 

 finally in quantities bearing the king's stamp as being the most 

 trustworthy. No great man — political, industrial, or other — in- 

 vented this system. It has everywhere resulted from men's efforts 

 to satisfy their needs in the easiest ways. So was it with the transi- 

 tion from a currency of intrinsic value to one of representative value. 

 When, instead of a direct payment in coin, there came to be used a 

 memorandum of indebtedness to be presently discharged, which 

 could be transferred to others — when, as in Italy, to save the weigh- 

 ing and testing of miscellaneous coins, there arose the practice of 

 depositing specified quantities with a custodian and having from 

 him negotiable receipts — when, as in England, the merchants, after 

 having been robbed by the king of their valuables, left for security 

 in the Tower, sought safer places, and, depositing them in the vaults 

 of goldsmiths, received in return " goldsmiths' notes," which could 

 pass from hand to hand; there was initiated a paper-currency. 

 Goldsmiths developed into bankers; after central banks there arose 

 provincial banks; promises to pay became to a great extent substi- 

 tutes for actual payments; and presently grew up the supplementary 

 system of checks, extensively serving in place of coin and notes. 

 Finally, bank-clerks in London, instead of presenting to the respec- 

 tive banks the many and various claims upon them, met and ex- 

 changed these claims and settled the balance : whence presently came 

 the clearing house. No superior man arranged all this. Each further 

 stage was prompted by the desire to economize labor. Erom primi- 

 tive fairs up to the daily transactions of the money market, distribu- 

 tion and exchange have developed without the dictation of any great 

 man, either of Mr. Carlyle's sort or of Mr. Mallock's sort. It has 

 been so throughout all other arrangements subserving national life, 

 even the governmental. Though here at least it seems that the 

 individual will and power play the largest part, yet it is otherwise. 

 I do not merely refer to the fact that without loyalty in citizens a 

 ruler can have no power; and that so the supremacy of a man 

 intrinsically or conventionally great is an outcome of the average 

 nature; but I refer to the fact that governmental evolution is essen- 

 tially a result of social necessities. On tracing its earliest stages 

 from savage life upwards, it becomes manifest that even a ministry is 

 not the mere invention of a king. It arises everywhere from that 

 augmentation of business which goes along with increase of territory 

 and authority: entailing the necessity for deputing more and more 

 work. Under its special aspect it seems to be wholly a result of the 



