Credit Money and the Precious Metals. 249 



to which he would have to put them, and, he added, 

 "through a very imperceptible, but still very dangerous, 

 because continual, influence, they do great injury to 

 science by contracting and limiting the habitual views 

 of those engaged in it." Now so many, and more or 

 less restricted, meanings have been acquired in the minds 

 of different persons by the words " money," " coin," 

 " currency," " standard," and so on, that I have at times 

 found it quite impossible to convey my meaning as 

 an advocate of one standard consisting of the two 

 metals, gold and silver, minted in a fixed ratio, when 

 using terms which my opponents have persisted in inter- 

 preting merely according to their own conventional habit. 

 A very great amount of misunderstanding arises from this 

 tyrannous influence of words. I have, therefore, been bold 

 enough to borrow the term /^;^from my distinguished relative's 

 electrolytical terminology, and propose to speak of monetary 

 ions instead of currency, or standard, or legal tender, as a 

 term including the attributes of all these things. In 

 the " Experimental Researches in Electricity " (Seventh 

 Series), ions are defined as those bodies which " can pass " 

 to the electrodes. The monetary io7i^ then, is that which 

 "can pass," and in the act of passing distributes wealth. 

 I am the more in favour of this term because my predecessor 

 tells us that, in his conception of electrolysis, "the deter- 

 mining force, is not at the poles, but within the body under 

 decomposition." And my idea of a monetary ion is that of 

 a something which, though deriving its liberatory or paying 

 power from the quality of legal tender conferred on it by 

 the Legislature — as the chemical ion is liberated by the 

 electrolytical arrangement — yet contains its value or deter, 

 mining force within itself* As in the case of the electro- 



*I hope this assumption of inherent value will be allowed to pass for the 

 purpose of the argument. Those economists who deny the labour basis of 

 value may interpret it as value other than mere fiat value. 



P 



