56 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



proper conforms strictly to Prof. Walker's own description ; prom- 

 ises to pay, or orders to pay, of whatever name or nature, do 

 not so conform. Money passes from hand to hand throughout 

 the community in final discharge of debts and full payment for 

 commo'iities by no magical process, nor because it is called 

 money, or declaied to be money by an edict of the government, 

 but for the reason that it is a complete equivalent. Bank bills, 

 promissory notes, checks, and various other credit instruments, 

 take the place of money in part by serving some of its purposes, 

 and it is because they do so that they become so dangerous in 

 actual use, if not properly guarded. But they serve these pur- 

 poses not through any force of their own, but as representatives. 

 Their energy is not primitive, but derivative. They are not 

 actual equivalents, but claims, only, or evidences of claim, upon 

 that which is an equivalent ; and when the principal in whose 

 name they act disappears, their force and authority is gone. Pro- 

 fessor Walker, in his whole characterization of money, largely 

 ignores its most delicate if not most important function — that of 

 serving as a measure of wealth or standard of value. Almost 

 anything which the parties concerned may agree upon will serve as 

 a medium of exchange — a bank bill, a check, a note of hand, " a 

 chalk mark behind the door, a notch in a stick, a wink at an 

 auctioneer" — but very few things will serve well as a standard 

 of value. To do so, they must themselves be valuable, that is, 

 be objects of general desire and the results of labor. They must 

 be something that pays as it goes — that walks by sight and not 

 by faith — that, when accepted, leaves no recourse upon anybody, 

 either in law or equity.- No credit instruments can fully meet 

 these requirements. The distinction is vital. Ignore it, and the 

 floodgates are open for all sorts of money and all sorts of notions 

 about money. 



