830 REPORT— 1887. 



quotations were to the effect that ' at common law money ought to be of the same 

 ■value, whether coined or not coined ; hence the expense of coining should he home 

 by the public' Whence came these words ? They implied a subtle insight into 

 the nature of money as a measure, and were parallel with the principle, old as, if 

 not older than, the law of the Jews, that ' divers measures are an abomination to 

 the Lord.' Those words were said three centuries before Charles II. 's time by the 

 great interpreters of the Roman law to the Middle Ages — Baldus, Bartholus, the 

 ' Glossators,' professors at Bologna and Pisa. A second illustration was the duty 

 of the State touching the stability of the value of money. The demand that 

 Government should interfere in that behalf had been spoken of as something new, 

 something modern, something made for the present occasion, and therefore factitious 

 and unsound. That was a contention which history alone could deal with. To 

 dispose of it he would introduce to the disciples of Smith and Ricardo another ally, 

 hitherto unknown, one of the great masters of thought of a date even earlier than 

 Baldus and Bartholus. This was Thomas Aquinas. Ou consulting that great man 

 on the point, he found it was his opinion that ' money ought to be so instituted or 

 established that it may remain more stable in value than other things.' A com- 

 parison was then made between this opinion and that of Aristotle. 



A third illustration related to the English authorities for the modern anti-silver 

 laws of England. Lord Liverpool stood as the scientific sponsor for the origin of 

 these laws, but upon examination it appeared that he regarded himself as basing 

 his views upon the opinions of others. For him Sir Wm. Petty, John Locke, and 

 Joseph Harris were the masters of English monetary thought. But what had 

 they to do with anti-silver laws ? History supplied the answer. Their ideas of 

 monetary reform in a country which maintained the gratuitous coinage of silver 

 and gold were limited to insisting that the silver pound should not be tampered 

 with, and that gold should be properly rated in terms of silver. The alleged pre- 

 cedent against silver, against two metals, existed only in imagination or in belief 

 based on error. 



A fourth illustration dealt with Lord Liverpool himself, who in passing into 

 history had been the object of what might be called an instance of modern myth- 

 making. He had been regarded as the scientific expert and sponsor of the mone- 

 tary system adopted in 1816. Research proves that this was an error. The 

 system proposed by Lord Liverpool in 1805 was devoid of the important anti-silver 

 features which gave the aggressively anti-silver character to England's actual 

 system. Who, then, was the scientific sponsor of the law of 1816 ? He could not 

 say ; but it seemed probable the credit lay between the Hon. Wellesley Pole (Lord 

 Maryborough) and Mr. John Wilson Croker. Lastly, the author referred to the 

 battle of the standards, smgle standard against double standard, which had raged 

 for a generation. The issue of the standards was a false issue in important respects. 

 It implied a necessary opposition between the single standard and the double 

 standard. There was no such necessity. The word ' standard ' was a slippery 

 place in the language, upon which millions slipped and fell. No one could escape 

 who had not armed his soles with definition. Now definition was made practicable 

 by history. Once it was understood that for centuries England had a single stan- 

 dard and a double standard at the same time (with its silver pound and rated 

 guinea) the monetary stumbling-place of this generation would lose its terrors. 



3. Some Notes on Money. Bij Sir T. Farrer. 



4. Changes in Real and in Money Prices. By Wynnard Hooper, M.A. 



Prices, though always stated in terms of money, for the purposes of economic 

 inquiry, are regarded as of two kinds. The real price of an article is its value ex- 

 pressed in terms of all other commodities, including the precious metals. Its money 

 price is its value expressed in money, that is, in terms of the precious metals only. 



A. Changes in real prices are produced by alterations in the supply-and-de- 

 mand relation of the commodities affected. There are eight possible cases of 



