204 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MONEY DAVIDSON. 



fineness, which can be easily done, so that equal weights of them 

 have practically equal values. They can be easily divided into 

 the weights and fractions desired so as to express large values 

 and small values. They have a very large degree of stability 

 of value, not so much perhaps as wheat, but more than, most 

 articles which could be employed as money. And lastly, they 

 are readily recognizable and cannot be easily counterfeited, and 

 above all, are soft enough and yet hard enough to be coinable, 

 " so that a portion, being once issued according to proper regu- 

 lations with the impress of the state, may be known to all as 

 good and legal currency equal in weight, size and value to all 

 similarly marked currency."* 



The precious metals are simply those commodities which 

 experience has shown to be the most suitable for general money 

 purposes. This, or than money article, may have this or that 

 money quality in a higher degree than gold or silver, but taking 

 them all in all, the precious metals have been found to be the 

 most suitable. They have survived, not because of any prejudice 

 in favor of the metals, but because they have shown themselves 

 to be the fittest to survive. 



Mevons : Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, p. 40. 



