2 i6 THE EVOLUTION OF 



and mistakes may easily arise. In 1241 the Emperor 

 Frederick II, son of Barbarossa, issued a temporary and 

 honest leather currency. In the last century, among 

 other places for local reasons, parchment and paper 

 currencies were temporarily established respectively 

 in the Cocos-Keeling Islands and in the Andamans. 

 From the ninth to the fifteenth centuries a most re- 

 markable paper currency was very widely established 

 in China. For a long time past there has been, and 

 probably still is, a noticeable currency in porcelain gam- 

 bling tokens in Siam, analogous to which were the 

 tradesmen's tokens of England and Europe, and the 

 taungbanni, or private mint money, of Burma. Now, 

 not one of these has any connexion with the state of 

 things we have been considering, for their existence is 

 dependent on conditions which are different altogether, 

 as they are each and all based on commercial credit. 

 So also the modern English silver money, the nickels of 

 the countries using them, the Indian rupee, the Japanese 

 yen, the United States dollar, are really tokens and money 

 of account only, being taken, as coins, to represent more 

 than their intrinsic value in terms of the gold standard 

 on which their value is based, but this fact arises out 

 of very different considerations than those we have been 

 discussing. 



Then again there is any amount of evidence to show 

 that oppression and cheating are just twice as easy with 

 a non-bullion currency as with a legal standard of gold 

 and silver coinage, which is in reality, so far from being 

 a curse as is so often preached to us, one of the greatest 

 blessings that man's ingenuity has ever brought about 

 for the benefit of his kind. In this connexion I may 

 once more draw attention to the anthropological law of 

 trade adapting itself to any circumstances. Cowries, 



