1908.] 



COPERNICUS AND GRESHAM. 23 



treatise upon money, entitled " Tractatus De Origine, Natura, Jure 

 et Mutationibus Monetarum." 



Of this work many manuscript copies of the Latin original were 

 made, and also of a French translation by the author himself under 

 the title " Traictie de la premiere invention des monnoies." This 

 translation was placed as early as 1373 at least in the library col- 

 lected by the direction of King Charles in the Louvre. 



Oresme, in stating the various workings of money as the mech- 

 anism of exchange, explained in precious words to his sovereign 

 that, whenever the public currency was altered or tampered with in 

 such a way as to bring into circulation two moneys, bearing the 

 same designation but in reality having two different values, the 

 money of lower value inevitably drove the money of higher value 

 out of circulation. For the merchants found it to their advantage 

 either to melt down the pieces of money that contained the higher 

 amount of metal and to sell the bullion by weight or else to export 

 the high weight coins to other lands. Thus Oresme says : " The 

 rate of exchange and the price of the moneys must be for the king- 

 dom as a law and a firm ordinance which in no way must alter or 

 change." And further in speaking of the ratio of exchange be- 

 tween gold and silver, Oresme points out that the value or propor- 

 tion in which those metals are exchanged in their natural state, is 

 the rate of exchange that must be maintained between gold and 

 silver currency. For if a given amount of gold is worth twenty 

 times as much silver, then a livre of gold would be worth twenty 

 livres of silver, a mark of gold twenty m-arks of silver. " But 

 always this proportion," he says, " must follow the natural habit 

 or rate of gold to silver, in value." The mutations of the currency 

 are of great peril to the national welfare " for the injury which 

 comes by it," he says, " is not so soon felt nor seen by the people, 

 as it would be by another tax, and nevertheless no such nor similar 

 can be more grievous or greater ; and. in addition, gold and silver, 

 by such mutations and changes, shrink and diminish in a kingdom, 

 and in spite of all vigilance and prohibition that may be taken, they 

 go abroad where they are accorded a higher value for, by adventure, 

 men carry more voluntarily their moneys to the places where they 

 know these have a greater value." 



