NOTHING IS MONEY BUT COIN. 419 



know what a grocer is. He deals in candles, in tea, in sago. I 

 know what a fruiter is. If I ask such a man what he deals in, he 

 has not the slightest difficulty in answering my question. It is mar 

 velous in this nineteenth century that of such a great profession, such 

 a great branch of human activity, there is no definition, except per 

 haps in my writings, of what a bank is and what it deals in. But it 

 is essential, in order to understand crises, to understand what banks 

 are, as they are phenomena of banking. They are the Chinese Sea 

 of banking. 



I said in &quot;Frazer&quot; a year ago that a banker did not deal in 

 money above one thirtieth of his business. Of course, in order to 

 go on to that computation I must understand what money is. There 

 is another ugly question. 



&quot;What is money? I gave a lecture before the Chamber of Com 

 merce of Liverpool on that question. I will, in passing, take the 

 word money. It comes from the temple of Juno Moneta, in 

 Rome. It was the mint of Borne; the money was stamped pieces of 

 metal, generally known by the name of coin. Nothing is money 

 but that; and the Romans had no doubt about it, because they had 

 no paper money. I am very willing, however, for this discussion, to 

 include the bank note as money. Why is not a check money? The 

 bank note itself is not money. A promise to give a thing is not the 

 thing itself. Those W 7 ho call paper money are in this mess; they 

 say that a piece of paper saying, I will pay you the money when 

 you ask for it,&quot; or &quot;when it is convenient for me,&quot; as in the case of 

 your currency, is money. Paper of all kinds are merely title deeds, 

 nothing else. Except when you are passing convertible currency 

 laws, pieces of paper are merely written certificates to go to the 

 judge and jury with, and to send a sheriff to 3-011 if you don t give 

 the coin which that calls for. They are evidence to produce before 

 a court of law. 



What distinguishes the bank note, so that, in the secondary sense, 

 it cannot be called money, from all pieces of paper, such as checks, 

 bills, and other instruments of that kind, which I wholly deny the 

 smallest possibility of giving the title of money to ? The anony 

 mous character of the bank note. If I take a man s check for my 

 horse, ordering Jones & Co. to pay Mr. Price 84, he has not got 

 my horse yet. I have got to ask who he is, and the likelihood of his 

 having 84 at Jones Co. s. That money does not circulate. That 

 is not money. 



The paper promises issued by the Government of the United 

 States that are made legal tenders come under the definition that I 

 have given of money in the secondary sense. They roll about just 

 like coin, and are taken from hand to hand. I was saying that I 

 estimated the money in use by a banker as one thirtieth. A little 

 time after Sir John Lubbock, of Robarts & Co., analyzed the re 

 ceipts of 19,000,000, of that firm, and found that in that amount 

 3 in 100 were cash, and ten shillings only were coin. There was 

 only three per cent I said it was one in thirty, and it turned out to 

 be one in thirty-three and one third. So bankers do not deal in 

 money. If that is not their business, what are these ninety-seven 

 things which are their staple ? What is a bank ? The answer will 

 depend upon these ninety-seven things. They are, one and all. 



