MONEY 



MONGOLS 



271 



change felt, however, that by the time of Eliza- 

 beth the people had resorted largely to ' tokens ' of 

 lead, tin, and even leather. These ' tokens ' were 

 at first private issues, and practically were like 

 very small promissory-notes. It was soon found 

 that they were forced into circulation by unfair 

 means, and then the issuers refused to change 

 them for goods or sterling money. The remedy 

 adopted in 1613 was to give a monopoly of striking 

 copper or brass farthing* to certain persons for a 

 consideration. This privilege, however, was so 

 much abused, that in many parts of the country, 

 including London, there wo.-* hardly any gold or 

 silver left the whole circulation being brass far- 

 things. The patentees tried to force these farthings 

 on the American colonies, but it is recorded of 

 Massachusetts 'March 4, 1634, at the General 

 Court at New Town, brass farthings were for- 

 bidden, and bullets were made to pass for far- 

 things.' These ' royal ' tokens were no sooner 

 suppressed, owing to the abuses which they had 

 caused, than they were again replaced by private 

 tokens, and it is said that over 20,000 different 

 kinds were in use between 1648 and 1672. Evelyn 

 in his Diary speaks of the tokens issued by every 

 tavern, ' passable through the neighbourhood, 

 though seldom reaching farther than the next 

 street or two.' 



From this slight historical sketch the principles 

 which should regulate the issues of ' token ' money 

 stand out clearly. The smallest coins cannot 

 be made of the precious metals of full value e.g. 

 a silver farthing would be less than one-tenth 

 of the present threepenny-piece and, accordingly, 

 baser material must be used. Here, however, 

 the danger arises of going to the other extreme 

 and making the coins too large. But this is 

 only a minor difficulty compared with the neces- 

 sary condition that tlie token coins must 1>ear a 

 fixed relation t the standard coins in value. Thus 

 we arrive at the fundamental principles of ' token ' 

 coins; they should ! issued in limited quantities, 

 be legal tender to a limited extent, and their so- 

 called intrinsic value should lie less than the 

 nominal value. Even those nations which use 

 Iwitli gold and silver as standard money (see BI- 

 METALLISM) are compelled to use token coins for 

 small values, whilst nations which have a gold 

 standard must make all their silver coins 'tokens.' 

 With the progress of civilisation 'representative' 

 money, as it has happily been styled by Jevons, 

 liecame of more anil more ini|>ortance. The 

 Romans, for example, had a highly-developed 

 banking system, which, however, was broken up 

 on the disruption of the empire. In the early 

 medieval period bills of exchange were used for 

 foreign payments; and that they were considered 

 as ' representative money ' is shown by the fact 

 that in England, up to" the Tudor period, their 

 value was regulated by the Iloyal Exchanger, a 

 high official connected with the mint. The develop- 

 ment of banking in the modern sense was very slow. 

 The earliest banks in Italy wore finance companies 

 which provided governments with loans, but the 

 great banks of the north of Europe were expressly 

 designed to provide good money to meet the pay- 

 ment of bills of exchange (see Adam Smith's 

 account of the origin of the Bank of Amsterdam, 

 Wealth, of Nation*, book iv.). The money in the 

 great trailing centres was drawn from various 

 countries, and was in general debased and worn. 

 The banks took this bad money from the mer- 

 chants and gave them good bank money in return. 

 The merchants, however, allowed the money to 

 remain in the bank, and handed one another 

 transfers. It was soon discovered that a small 

 amount of actual coin was sufficient to meet all 

 liabilities, and, accordingly, the remainder was 



lent. In this manner ' bank money ' has in process 

 of time come to consist of a large mass of repre- 

 sentative money supported on a metallic basis. 

 See BANKING. 



Compare, on the difficulty of defining ' money,' Sidg- 

 wick's Principles of Political Economy, book ii. chap. 

 iv. ; on the history of material money, Kuding's Annals 

 of the Coinaye, Dana Horton's Silver Pound, Kenyon's 

 Gold Coins of Enyland, Hawkins' Silrer drills of Eng- 

 land; on tokens, Boyne's Token* in the Sfrenteenth 

 Century : on the ' money market,' Bagehot's Lombard 

 Street; on the general principles, Jevons' AJone;/, Pro- 

 fessor F. A. Walker's Money, Professor Nicholson's 

 Money and Monetary Problems, Ridgeway's Origin of 

 MetaUic Currency ( 1892 ). See also BULLION, CURRENCY, 

 WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, CKOWN, DOLLAR, GROAT, 

 GUINEA, NUMISMATICS, SHILLING, VALUE, Ac. 



Money-lending. See USURY. 



Money-wort, a name given to various plants 

 Dioscorea, Lythraceoe, Thymus, &c. 



Monge, GASPARD, a French mathematician 

 and physicist, was born of humble parentage at 

 Beaune, in the department of Cote d'Or, 10th May 

 1746. When only fifteen, he went to study natural 

 philosophy at the Oratorian College of Lyons, and 

 afterwards obtained admission into the famous 

 artillery school at Mezieres, where he invented the 

 method known as 'Descriptive Geometry.' In 

 1780 he was chosen a member of the French 

 Academy, and was called to the Paris Lyceum as 

 professor of Hydrodynamics. During the heat of 

 the Revolution he l>ecame minister of Marine, but 

 soon took charge of the great manufactories for 

 supplying republican France with arms and gun- 

 powder. After he had founded the Ecole Polytech- 

 nif)iie, he was sent by the Directory to Italy. 

 Here he formed a close friendship with Bonaparte, 

 and, following him to Egypt, undertook the manage- 

 ment of the newly-founded Egyptian Institute. On 

 his return to- France, he resumed his functions as 

 professor in the Ecole Polytechnique, and, though 

 his reverence for Napoleon continued unabated. Tie 

 hotly opposed his aristocratic and dynastic views. 

 The title of Count of Pehisium was conferred on 

 him by Napoleon. He died 28th July 1818. His 

 principal works were Traite Eleinentaire de 

 Statique (1788), Lemons de Geoinftrie Descriptive 

 (1795), and Application de V Analyse a la Geo- 

 metrie (1795). 



Moni>'h> r. a picturesque city of Bengal in India, 



i the right bank of the Ganges, 80 miles E. by S. 



ing into the river, ami the native quarters. From 

 the 12th century onwards it was a place of consider- 

 able strength ; in the 18th centurv Mir Kasim made 



it his headquarters. He established an arsenal, 

 and its armourers are still famed. Pop. (1891) 

 57,077. The district has an area of 3921 sq. m., 

 with a pop. (1891) of 2,036,021. 



Mongols, an Asiatic people l>elonging to the 

 Ural-Altaic branch of the human family, derive 

 their name from a word many, which means 'brave,' 

 'bold.' Their origin and early history are lost in 

 a dim antiquity. Chinese annals first speak of 

 them as dwelling, 6th to 9th century, in what is 

 now Mongolia north of the desert of Gobi, and in 

 the regions south of Lake Baikal. The origin of 

 the royal house is enshrouded in myths, the maternal 

 ancestor being by tradition a she- wolf ; probably 

 the house was descended from a ruling family of 

 the Turks (Hiung-nu). The cradle of the Mongol 

 people seems to have been on the plains between 

 the river Onon, the Orkhon, and the Kerulon, the 

 latter a tributary of the Argun. It was in that 

 region that Genghis Khan was born, and in that 

 region that he fixed his permanent camp or capital, 

 at a place called Karakorum. An ancestor of the 

 great conqueror ruled in the middle of the 12th 



