146 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



the market prices of the list of commodities fixed upon to 

 determine the value of money, and would publish the 

 result monthly or quarterly, and the value of money so 

 determined would be used to regulate all payments of debts, 

 salaries, &c. " Thus suppose a debt of £100 was incurred 

 on July 1, 1875, and was to be paid July 1, 1878, and the 

 Registrar's table showed that in that interval gold had 

 fallen in value six per cent., then the creditor would claim 

 to be paid an increase of six per cent., while, if there had 

 been a rise in the value of gold then the debtor would 

 have a right to pay proportionally less than the amount 

 nominally due." 



He says there are only two difficulties — the determina- 

 tion of the commodities chosen to fix the standard value, 

 and the complexity introduced into the relations of debtors 

 and creditors. The latter is, no doubt, a real objection, 

 but it does not arise (as I shall presently show) when 

 paper money alone is used. Neither is there any real 

 difficulty in the former. What is needed is to take a 

 representative selection of all the necessaries of life. These 

 may be roughly classed as food, clothing, houses, fuel, and 

 literature. For the first we might take meat, bread, 

 potatoes, sugar, tea, butter, and beer ; for houses timber, 

 bricks, iron, glass, lime, cement, slates, and building land 



and so on under the other headings. But the most 



important consideration is, that each item be taken in the 

 proportion in which it is consumed in the country. The 

 need of this was seen by the original proposer of the 

 method— Joseph Lowe, in 1822 — but has been neglected 

 by some modern writers. It would, therefore, be necessary 

 first to estimate the total quantities of each item con- 

 sumed in the kingdom in a year, which could be done 

 without much difficulty by experts, and then, representing 

 the smallest quantity of the whole series by one or ten, to 

 give all the others their due proportions. The prices of 

 these several commodities being ascertained on the average 

 of a number of years to be fixed upon, a table would be 

 formed, giving the money-value of the due proportion of 

 each of the commodities. Then, by adding up these values, 

 we should have a sum total which would represent with 



