AUXILIARY EXCHANGE. 401 



cliases made; whence, along with advantage to the buyer, 

 came checks and stimuli to the producer or the distributor. 



762. With like unobtrusiveness crept in a further de 

 velopment of the media of exchange. Though coins were 

 far less cumbrous than things previously used, still they were 

 so cumbrous as to impede extensive transactions; as they 

 still do in China, where copper or bronze coins strung through 

 holes in their centres, are extremely inconvenient for large 

 payments. Moreover, even after private mints had been 

 abolished, there was, besides the debasing of coinage by 

 kings, the clipping and sweating of coins ; making the units 

 of value partially indeterminate, and so entailing weighings 

 and disputes. More serious still was a further defect. Im 

 mediate payment was implied: a requirement which in 

 many cases negatived transactions that might else have been 

 effected. Often one who wanted to buy, and had property 

 enabling him to buy, had not the requisite cash immediately 

 available. To meet these and converse cases, there began a 

 system of uncompleted purchases, to be completed either at 

 named or unnamed dates there was initiated a simple form 

 of credit-paper. There passed some document which, while 

 it acknowledged the money or the goods received, promised 

 to hand over the specified equivalent either some time or at 

 a specified time. Transactions of this kind, arising spon 

 taneously in the making of bargains, gradually generated a 

 system of payment by memoranda of claims; so initiating 

 a paper-currency. For all paper-currency consists of memo 

 randa of claims in one or other form &quot; promises to pay. 7 



Beyond this need, and beyond the need for portability 

 which in ancient China led to the use of notes representing 

 the iron money then current, two other needs were met. In 

 Italy, at a time when coins were so miscellaneous that much 

 time had to be spent in weighing and testing, there began the 

 practice of depositing a quantity of them with a custodian, 

 after once for all estimating their value and receiving in 



