324 Science of Money. [July, 



considered general — a state of things that we, with our 

 modern prepossessions, are apt to associate, although not 

 always correctly, v/ith the extremity of poverty. Money was 

 not an , invention, but a growth — a development arising 

 gradually out of the needs of society. We have seen how 

 it arose out of the Drift of the Market, and therefore there 

 is a Science of Money, 



Here my subject properly ends, because the further his- 

 tory of money has reference to the adaptations of an intel- 

 ligent design — adaptations which, so soon as there is a clear 

 view of money's existence and uses, are all more or less obvious 

 — more or less readily seen to be advantageous or necessary. 

 But in order to complete our question it is necessary still to 

 follow the principal of these changes, because to most of 

 us of to-day money has become almost indissolubly asso- 

 ciated with the Mint and the precious metals. We have 

 hardly even alluded to this part of the money question, and 

 therefore to most people's ideas we have not even yet reached 

 the recognisable domain of money. From our stage of the 

 primitive bars and rings, therefore, let us, in deference to 

 popular prepossessions, descend for a brief space into the 

 modern arena. 



The intervention of the State is at no great distance after 

 the recognition of money. At first this may be limited to 

 the mere guarantee by an official stamp of an article so 

 generally used and trusted in ; but eventually the State ap- 

 propriates the whole question. A minuter subdivision of 

 value is, no doubt, the very first of the secondary steps of 

 money's subsequent progress. The ring— holding still to 

 our representative and very illustrative ring — is broken into 

 pieces to suit the wants of small dealings. For the opposite 

 reason, there is next felt the want of the expression of high 

 value in reasonable bulk, and silver and gold are successively 

 brought in to supply the need. Gradually the monetary 

 idea has become a subject so familiar and plastic that the 

 State can venture on materials for its money without refer- 

 ence to any other consideration than their special suitability 

 for money, and the cost of getting them. In this crisis the 

 iron is liable to be summarily dismissed from office. Money 

 takes to itself a further distinctive existence, and the mate- 

 rials of which it is chiefly composed are specially honoured 

 as "the precious metals." But long prior to this result — 

 perhaps concurrently with even the earliest of these various 

 secondary steps — the artistic idea has been struggling to the 

 front.- It has never, indeed, been relatively behind in the 

 early history of those intelligent races among whom money 



