328 REPORT— 1891. 



cause he did not want it. A may have removed, or have 

 nothing, or have died. It must be said of the issuer of mone}', 

 as is said of the kingly office, "The King never dies," and 

 that the State never becomes insolvent. The issue of repre- 

 sentative value cannot be intrusted to any person or any 

 body of people whose shoulders are less broad than the State 

 itself. Money, as the representative of food — the support of 

 labour as it passes from hand to hand— must be sure of con- 

 joined food and labour being given in exchange for it whenever 

 it is presented. This leads to the question that the issues 

 must be adequate to the requirements of the State — i.e., of 

 each person within its limits. Mr. Del Mar crystallizes what 

 I think no one will doubt the truth of into these words : "An 

 expanding traffic needs an expanding money, one that by 

 regulation can be made to keep even pace with increasing 

 exchanges;" but must not be liable to "increases, without 

 regulation, either from the adventitious production of mines, 

 the obtaining of the money-metal by conquest, the unlimited 

 emission of Government notes, the license of private coiners, 

 or the greed of private banks of issue." In another place Mr. 

 Del Mar says, "Pieces of money only need a mark of autho- 

 rity impressed upon them, and a Government virtuous enough 

 to restrict their issue and strong enough to prevent the money 

 mark being counterfeited." Some persons allege that such a 

 Government cannot exist in Australasia. Then, shall we put 

 ourselves in the hands of associated banks and their outside 

 confederates — shareholders and other traders in money? As 

 your late Mr. Bathgate remarked, "We have put our head 

 into a noose, and let the banks turn the twitch-stick." 



As an illustration of the working of a medium of exchange 

 let a single instance be given, going back thousands of years. 

 It is allowed that the term nummits, once used by the Eomans 

 for money, came from the Greek vo/xo9 (law), in this case 

 meaning the exact science of numbers ; so that number and 

 not "intrinsic" value is the synonym of the circulating medium 

 of exchange — money. On the banks of the Nile are found 

 small pebbles, flat and thin like money, giving sizes from a 

 sixpence to a crown-piece : these are believed to have been 

 used by the Kings of Egypt for money : hence the scientists 

 have dubbed these nodules of limestone nummulitcs. Now, as 

 there was an unlimited number of these ready-made pebbles, 

 any one might easily get a stock and offer them in exchange 

 for whatever he wanted, without having expended as much 

 labour for each pebble as the commodity he proposed to pur- 

 chase with it had cost the producer of that article for use. It 

 is thus seen at once that the pebble-money must be restricted 

 in its number, as the original form of numvvus from v6ixo<; (law) 

 implies ; else, like the over-issued paper money in Argentina, it 



