CURRENCY AND COINAGE 183 



of blood-money, on the value of the human body on the 

 following scale in terms of British money : 



A new-born male child . . . . Rs. 10 

 A new-born female child ... j% 



A boy 25 



A girl I 7 | 



A young man 75 



A young woman 83^ 



The necessities of civilized Governments obliged them 

 thus to set up, and educate populations up to, the idea 

 of relative values. By making the people accustomed 

 to giving domestic animals and articles a fixed relative 

 value, the idea of currency became possible to them, as 

 we shall presently see. In fact, we are now present at 

 the very birth of that product of human reasoning which 

 is called Currency. For the term Currency means the 

 use of an article commonly possessed as the medium of 

 exchanging actual property between buyer and seller. 

 Currency is thus the means of measuring the relative 

 value of other articles. 



The step in evolution now under consideration is so 

 important for the present argument that I pause to make 

 clear the difference between the conditions when trade is 

 carried on by means of barter only and when it is carried 

 on by means of a currency. Barter, as we have seen, is 

 the exchange of possessions of grain, say, for fruit, of 

 an adze for a knife. But when our daily transactions 

 become so far complicated as to require some other 

 article in common domestic use to be interposed 

 between the grain and the fruit and between the 

 adze and the knife, i.e. a medium of exchange be- 

 tween the articles bartered, we have set up a currency 

 and a medium of exchange. To make my meaning 



