20 BALCH— THE LAW OF ORESME, [April 23, 



sive treatise for their respective sovereigns on the practical func- 

 tions and workings of money, and Gresham wrote a letter to his 

 Queen in which he pointed out to her that good and bad coin could 

 not circulate together. No branch of science arises all developed at 

 one bound from the brain of a single man as Minerva sprang all 

 armed from the head of Jove. It advances by successive degrees, 

 as one scholar after another, armed with the knowledge acquired 

 by his predecessors, develops further what the human race knows 

 of the laws of the universe. And as Hugo Grotius, who assembled 

 from all points of the compass the rules and usages that princes and 

 cities observed in his day in their relations one with another in his 

 monumental work, " De Jure Belli ac Pacis," and gave them a 

 further advance in the trend of a humane and civilized development, 

 has justly been called ever since the father of the science of Inter- 

 national Law, so Nicole Oresme and, a greater man than he, Nicolaus 

 Copernicus, for their pioneer work in the exposition of the true rules 

 that govern money as the medium of commercial exchange, have just 

 as truly been described by ]\IacLeod as the Castor and Pollux of 

 monetary science. They both delved into the past experiences in 

 the matter of money of their respective countries, and probably made 

 use of much of what the Greek and the Roman publicists had said 

 on the subject. The work of Grotius first redounded to the advan- 

 tage of humanity by the application of many of the humane prin- 

 ciples that he advocated by their practical adoption by Gustavus 

 Adolphus of Sweden in the terrible Thirty Years War. The light 

 shed by Oresme and Copernicus on the functions of currency first 

 helped to lighten the burdens of humanity through their application 

 by Charles the Fifth of France and Sigismund the First of Poland. 

 And a generation after the true expounder of our solar and planetary 

 system had prepared his treatise on money. Sir Thomas Gresham 

 likewise, through Elizabeth of England, aided the human race to 

 derive the advantages that are conferred upon society by an honestly 

 maintained measure of value. 



The importance of the economic work of Nicole Oresme was first 

 revealed to the world at large in 1862 by William Roscher, professor 

 of political economy in the University of Leipzig. Oresme's master 

 work, " Tractatus De Origine, Natura, Jure et Mutationibus Mone- 



