TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 829 



4. Creditors irapaid after certain period from date of liquidation to have right 

 to apply to court to order levy on reserve liability from all parties liable, 

 sufficient to pay all debts ; equities between shareholders and parties thus 

 levied on to be determined in liquidation ; so that no creditor need wait 

 issue of liquidation if reserve liability sufficient to pay debt. 



2. The Economic Policy of the United States. 

 Hij Professor Leone Levi, F.S.S. 



FUJI) AY, SEPTEMBER 2. 



The following Report and Papers were read : — 



1. Report of the Committee on the methods of ascertaining and measuring 

 Variations in the Vahie of the Monetary Standard. — See Reports 

 p. 247. ^ 



2. Monetary Jurisprudence. By S. Dana IIorton. 



The author dealt with the nature of money, the present state of monetary 

 knowledge, and the methods of enlarging that knowledge. Discussing the position 

 of money in the sciences, he placed money on the border, partly in the held of 

 economics and partly in that of jurisprudence, the latter being the controlUno- 

 portion. The peculiarity of monetary jurisprudence was its partial extra-territo*^ 

 riality. The laws are of one State, the data in large measure belonging to the family 

 of States ; the individual wealth-maker, wealth-exchanger, wealth-consumer sup- 

 plying theconditions in the midst of which the State acts. The mere name of 

 monetary jurisprudence carried with it the recognition of the importance of history 

 for the education of a jurist is an education in the history of principles and of their 

 application. The neglect of this double jurisdiction of monetary science explained 

 the backwardness of its position to-day. The jurist cared little for economy ; the 

 economist little for law. A fashion of thought which grew up in the shadow of 

 Adam Smith favoured that neglect. A proper utilisation of monetary history 

 might therefore expect to dispel many of the difficulties of the subject. The 

 world has been wont to forget much that it knew ; but in the monetary 

 field it is wont to forget it over and over again. It is necessary for science 

 to accept the responsibilities of statesmanship, to deal with principles as well 

 as with data — not only to inquire into the twisted bayonets and the officers 

 responsible for them, but also into the system that produced the olRcers. The time 

 that produces an address of such range as Dr. Gifien's,and an epoch-making report 

 such as that just read, can afford to deal with the whole subject, and especially the 

 higher portions of it — the duty of the State in the regulation of money. The 

 author then gave illustrations of the extent to which history throws a lio-ht upon 

 questions of principle. The first point illustrated was the popular antithesis be- 

 tween the artificial and the natural — an antithesis which o-oes to the root of the 

 opposition between the political and the economic side of money. As an illus- 

 tration of the instructive lessons which history could give, he instanced gratuitous 

 coinage. Is it artificial or natural P The facts would show the fallacy of the cur- 

 rent application of this antithesis to money. If anything was artificial, gratuitous 

 coinage was artificial. By a law of gratuitous coinage the State gave a bounty to 

 bullion-owners. And yet that had been the law of England for 220 years. What 

 was the origin of that principle which the councillors of Charles II. introduced in 

 an age when the seigniorial system was the rule of Christendom ? He would read 

 two quotations which stated the principle and reason of it and threw a light which 

 would be looked for in vain in monetary literature of the nineteenth century. The 



