THE LAW OF ORESME, COPERNICUS AND GRESHAM. 



By THOMAS WILLING BALCH. 

 {Read April 23, 1908.) 



Among the most certain laws known to economic science is the 

 one that, when two moneys of unequal value are placed in circu- 

 lation at the same time side by side as currency of the realm, the 

 poorer or cheaper will drive the better or dearer from circulation. 

 This law, though fought over most strenuously in this country within 

 recent years, as if its immutable operation had not been thoroughly 

 demonstrated in past ages of humanity, was known in part at least 

 to the Ancients. Of this there is ample proof in the " Frogs " of 

 Aristophanes. In that play, the foremost comic poet dramatist of 

 Greece places in the mouth of the chorus these lines : 



" Oftentimes have we reflected on a similar abuse 

 In the choice of men for office, and of coins for common use ; 

 For your old and standard pieces, valued and approved and tried 

 Here among the Grecian nations, and in all the world beside, 

 Recognized in every realm for trusty stamp and pure assay. 

 Are rejected and abandoned for the trash of yesterday; 

 For vile, adulterate issue, drossy, counterfeit and base, 

 Which the traffic of the city passes current in their place."^ 



In Bohn's Classical Library this passage is thus rendered : " The freedom 

 of the city has often appeared to us to be similarly circumstanced witn regard 

 to the good and honorable citizens as to the old coin and the new gold. For 

 neither do we employ these at all, which are not adulterated, but the most 

 excellent, as it appears, of all coins, and alone correctly struck and proved 

 by ringing everywhere, both among the Greeks and the barbarians, but this 

 vile copper coin, struck but yesterday and latterly with the vilest stamps." 



In the above quotation it is distinctly shown that the better coins 

 that had been current were driven out and replaced by pieces of 

 inferior value. And as a poetic mind like that of Aristophanes 

 could hardly have understood, much less have discovered such a 

 subtle unwritten law of money, had not some knowledge of it been 



' Frere's translation. 



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