26 BALCH— THE LAW OF ORESME, [April 23. 



" The value of money is depreciated by various causes, either by the 

 change of the name, while the same weight of metal contains a mixture of 

 copper which exceeds the measure desired ; or because the weight is wanting, 

 although the mixture has been accomplished in the right proportion ; or, what 

 is the worst, because the two vices meet together at the same time. The 

 value of money diminishes of itself by reason of a long service that uses the 

 metal and diminishes its quantity and this reason suffices to cause to be 

 placed in circulation a new money. This necessity is recognized by an in- 

 fallible sign, when the money weighs notably less than the money intended 

 to be acquired. It is understood that there results a deterioration of the 

 money." 



At the time Copernicus prepared his treatise on the money of 

 the realm for his sovereign liege, King Sigismund, the PoHsh King- 

 dom included Thorn, Danzig, and a large part of Prussia. But a 

 portion of Prussia, including Konigsberg, had been erected by the 

 treaty of Cracow, concluded in 1525 between Sigismund, King of 

 Poland, and Albert, Margraf of Brandenburg, into a hereditary fief 

 for the benefit of the latter and his male descendants, which the 

 margraf was to hold of King Sigismund. As by this feudal tenure 

 by Margraf Albert of part of Prussia, subject to the overlordship 

 of the PoHsh king, the two countries were in a sense one, Coper- 

 nicus, in his treatise on the money of the realm, expounded to his 

 king what measures were necessary in order to restore stability to 

 the much depreciated Prussian money and then maintain the value 

 of the new money on a parity so that it could circulate both in Poland 

 and Prussia. After pointing out how useless it was to attempt to 

 introduce into circulation by the side of a depreciated currency one 

 of greater value, he then explained how the introduction of a cheaper 

 measure of value by the side of a higher one would drive the former 

 from circulation. 



"If it does not do to introduce a new and good money, while the old 

 is bad and continues to circulate, a much greater error is committed by intro- 

 ducing alongside of an old currency, a new currency of less value; this latter 

 does not merely depreciate the old, it drives it away, so to speak, by main 

 force." 



Then in answer to the argument that a depreciated currency helps 

 the poor, he says : 



" We see flourish the countries that possess a good currency, while 

 those that only have a depreciated one, fall into decadence and decline. . . . 



