THE CURRENCY. 17 



we buy anything with specie, we sell the specie— our ideas will 

 grow wonderfully clear. 



THE DISADVANTAGES OF A SPECIE CURRENCY. 



The governments of the different nations have made gold and 

 silver a legal tender In the payment of debts. Does this legislation 

 change the nature of the transactions where gold and silver are 

 exchanged for other desirable commodities? Not at all. Does it 

 transform the exchange into something other than barter? By no 

 means. But the exchangeable value of any article depends upon 

 its utility, and the difficulty of obtaining it. Now, the legislatures, 

 by making the precious metals a legal tender enhance their utility 

 in a remarkable manner. It is not their absolute utility, indeed, that 

 is enhanced, but their relative utility in the transactions of trade. 

 As soon as gold and silver are adopted as the legal tender, they are 

 invested with an altogether new utility. By means of this new 

 utility, whoever monopolizes the gold and silver of any country — 

 and the currency, as we shall soon discover, is more easily monop- 

 olized than any other commodity— obtains control thenceforth,. over 

 the business of that country; for no man can pay his debts without 

 the permission of the party who monopolizes the article of legal 

 tender. Thus, since the courts recognize nothing as money in the 

 payment of debts except the article of legal tender, this party is 

 enabled to levy a tax on all transactions except such as take place 

 without the intervention of credit. 



When a man is obliged to barter his commodity for money, in 

 order to have money to barter for such other commodities as he 

 may desire, he at once becomes subject to the impositions which 

 moneyed men know how to practice on one who wants and must 

 have money for the commodity he offers for sale. When a man is 

 called upon suddenly to raise money to pay a debt, the case is still 

 harder. Men whose property far exceeds the amount of their debts 

 in value— men who have much more owing to thom than they owe 

 to others— are daily distressed for the want of money; for the want 

 of that intervening medium, which, even when it is obtained in 

 sufficient quantity for the present purposes, acts only as a mere in- 

 strument of exchange. 



By adopting the precious metals as the legal tender in the pay- 

 ment of debts, society confers a new value upon them, which new 

 value is not inherent in the metals themselves. This new value 

 becomes a marketable commodity. Thus gold and silver become 

 a marketable commodity as (groAD) a meditm of exchange. 

 This ought not so to be. This new value has no natural meastire, 

 because it is not a natural, but a social value. This new social 

 value is inestimable, it is incommensurable with any other known 

 value whatever. Thus money, instead of retaining its proper 

 relative position, becomes a superior species of commodity— super- 

 ior not in degree, but in kind. Thus money becomes the absolute 



