12 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



first money made legal currency in this our Commonwealth 

 was? On the 4th of March, 1635, the general court of the 

 colony ordered that bullets of full bore should be counted 

 legal currency at the rate of a farthing apiece. In 1637, the 

 same general court ordered that merchantable beaver should 

 be reckoned as money at the rate of ten shillings a pound. 

 Next, wampum was made current. Innumerable other things 

 have been used as money, — iron with the Lacedemonians, 

 cattle with the Romans and our Saxon ancestors, leather 

 with the Carthaginians, cubes of salt with the Abyssinians, 

 etc. ; so that anything that is really an object of desire costs 

 labor, from the time of Abraham, when he paid to the chil- 

 dren of Heth 400 shekels of silver, till now. 



With the civilized and commercial people of the globe, 

 gold and silver have been the money of the world, and there 

 are some things which are advantageous in the metals, which 

 explain why they are used as money. They are valuable ; 

 everybody wants gold aud silver, not simply as money, but 

 for ornaments, for plate and other uses. They are valuable 

 in themselves, and then they cost labor to get them, so that 

 here are metals that have a real value in themselves, and 

 have the first element which is necessary in money. They 

 wear out very slowly, are very easily divisible and largely 

 distributed, are of the same quality and subject to very few 

 fluctuations. Our money, then, is so much gold and silver. 



Now, we shall notice that the value of money depends 

 exactly on the amount of circulation. The amount is the 

 great thing. The more money there is, the less valuable, 

 just as in any other commodity, and this brings to notice a 

 very important matter about money, little understood ; that 

 where a nation uses gold aud silver, there is never any 

 possibility of a redundancy or stringency of the money 

 market. Supposing we have got, for a time, a redundancy 

 — more money than is needed. What takes place? One 

 of two things, probably both. In the first place, gold 

 becomes cheap, and we at once begin to use it for other 

 thiugs than money — for ornaments, plate and other pur- 

 poses. When gold is cheap, that means that other things 

 are dear in comparison with it. This immediately leads to 

 the sending off of gold to where it is not so cheap, for the 



