,9o8.] COPERI^ICUS AND GRESHAM. 19 



the common possession of the intellectuals of Greece in the epoch in 

 which he lived, we can infer from Aristophanes's statement of it, that 

 the Grecian states passed through the ups and downs of a change in 

 the standard of value caused by a debasement of the currency. 



The same state of affairs existed among the Romans, and the 

 amount of benefits and evils that obtained in the reign of each Roman 

 emperor can in a measure be judged by the greater or less purity of 

 the coinage issued in their respective reigns. 



The experiences of the ancient world with money as the mech- 

 anism of exchange were largely known to the peoples of the Middle 

 Ages, and they had to discover for themselves at a great and bitter 

 cost that any attempt to debase the currency only results in the 

 good money disappearing from circulation to the ruin of the com- 

 monwealth and of its inhabitants, especially of the poorer members. 



Three men, exercising three different callings, but all three pro- 

 found students, and two of them ranking among the scholars of the 

 world, in three different countries, in three distinct periods of time, 

 discovered independently of one another and explained to their 

 respective sovereigns that when into the currency of a country a 

 poorer or cheaper money is injected by the side of a better which is 

 the standard of value, the certain and immutable result will be that 

 the currency of the realm will be debased to the standard of the 

 poorer money. For as it will then be possible to pay debts in either 

 money, people will naturally pay them in the cheaper currency, 

 selling the better money by weight at the premium that it will com- 

 mand in the standard of the poorer currency. 



These three men were Nicole Oresme, Bishop of Lisieux in 

 Xormandy, who stated this subtle unwritten law of money for 

 Charles the Fifth of France, surnamed the Wise ; Nicolaus Coper- 

 nicus of Thorn in Prussia, the discoverer of the Copernican theory 

 of astronomy, who expounded this same law of the currency for 

 Sigismund the First of Poland ; and Sir Thomas Gresham, a noted 

 English merchant, who explained it to Elizabeth of England. It is 

 proper, then, that in honor of these three discoverers of an economic 

 truth that is a precious thing for humanity to know, that this law 

 should be called the Law of Oresme, Copernicus and Gresham. 



Oresme and Copernicus each prepared a learned and comprehen- 



