186 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY DAVIDSON. 



that cloth was the standard. Wadmail, or coarse woollen cloth 

 formed the basis of an elaborate system of currency in Norway.* 



In Iceland this cloth currency gave place with the develop- 

 ment of trade to a currency of stockfish. The foreign traders 

 did not desire the northern coarse cloth ; but there was a steady 

 market in Southern Europe for fish. There is extant a procla- 

 mation for the regulation of trade between England and Iceland 

 in which an elaborate scale of prices for articles of all kinds is 

 drawn up in terms of dried codfish. } And in Newfoundlond 

 cod was for a long time, and still is in many parts, the only coin. 



In general, one may say that whenever there arises a scarcity 

 of metallic money in a community which produces one chief 

 article for trade, that article will serve as money. Thus cod 

 was used in Newfoundland, tobacco in Virginia, wheat and maple 

 sugar in Nova Scotia,} tenpenny nails, as Adam Smith tells us, 

 in Kirkaldy, olive oil in the Levant, tea in Central Asia, block 

 salt in Abyssinia, and in various parts of Asia and Africa. 



The history of the currency experiments of the European 

 colonies in North America is instructive. These communities 

 suffered from a chronic want of coin, one of the results of an 

 ill-considered colonial policy. Tobacco was a form of currency 

 in Virginia sanctioned, not only by custom, but by actual legis- 

 lation. In 1619, the first General Assembly of the colony 

 established a ratio between tobacco and silver ; and almost every 

 succeeding Assembly dealt with the same question. In 1642, 

 tobacco became the sole legal tender ; and it was not till 1656 

 that silver could again be used if required. But tobacco 

 remained the actual medium of exchange, and in 1730 paper 

 money, like our modern grain receipts and pig iron warrants, 

 was issued against tobacco. These, along with the commodity, 

 formed the main money in Virginia down to the beginning of 

 the present century, and were preferred, because more stable in 

 value, to the continental currency. In the New England colonies 

 a very great variety of articles of trade was made legal tender. 



*Morris and Bax : Socialism, its Growth and Outcome, p. 249 n. 



tRidgeway : op. cit., pp. 18, 19. 



JPatterson : Memoir of the Rev. James MacGregor, D. D., p. 82. 



