1871.] Science of Money. 323 



of money, as of any other commercial article, should mean 

 the exchangeable value, that value, namely, which places 

 gold above an equal quantity of silver, and silver above as 

 much lead or copper. But this proper sense of the term is 

 almost lost sight of in the general prevalence of quite an- 

 other sense, which, erroneously as we have seen, associates 

 it with rates of interest and discount. Interest and discount 

 refer to surplus means generally, to the capital of the com- 

 munity, or, more strictly, to the floating or circulating por- 

 tion of the capital — the part of it that people have to spare, 

 and that is thus available for loaning. 



And now we return to our first and principal question, 

 upon which we are, I hope, in a position to decide — Did 

 money originate by design or otherwise ? But the question 

 has been already virtually answered when we found reason 

 to conclude that even after money had come into being 

 through the natural tendencies or "drift of the market," it 

 had not been recognised, even in the act of using it, until the 

 subsequent accidents of its further course had given it a 

 distinctive unmistakable aspect of its own. Of course, there- 

 fore, it did not owe this existence to anticipation and design. 



Nevertheless, there is so strong a general prejudice to- 

 wards the opposite view that it may well be asked — What has 

 caused and what sustains such an opinion ? This bias has 

 arisen chiefly, I think, from an exaggerated idea of the diffi- 

 culties of early trade, under the barter system, prior to the 

 use of money — difficulties so great, as we are apt to suppose, 

 that our predecessors in trade must have been impelled 

 into the invention of money. Indeed, volumes have been 

 written upon the unbearable inconveniencies and obstacles 

 of these pre-money times. But these difficulties are entirely 

 of our own imagining, because, in the effort to realise them, 

 our minds are prepossessed by a condition and scale of trade 

 that had no existence in the times in question. The true 

 case is, that each successive age has found its own facilities 

 for all it had to do, and was no more under a sense of incon- 

 venience than any people of to-day less advanced than our- 

 selves, and with wants as limited as their commerce. Even 

 the bees'-wax bartering of our Borneo Dyak would not have 

 ceased upon a mere explanation of the use of money, unac- 

 companied by the additional commerce that required money's 

 facilities. Money could not live in his thin atmosphere of 

 trade, any more than double-entry book-keeping in the 

 simple dealings of a costermonger. In some of our more 

 sequestered villages, if, indeed, any such still remain in this 

 railway age, the use of money even now may hardly be 



