1871.] Science of Money. 325 



has first appeared ; and it finds its expression here in a 

 shapely form given to the metallic pieces. In short, the rude 

 fragments of the ring become coins, and the ambitious taste 

 of a ruler is not long behind with the addition of his name 

 and effigy. Such must be the true gage and the true im- 

 portance, or rather unimportance, of the Libyan discovery. 



Conventionality is now supremely enthroned in the 

 domain of money. It is readily apprehended that money is 

 not wanted in any sense of actual consumption applicable 

 to other articles. While, therefore, a half ration of food 

 could not be reasonably issued as a whole ration, yet 

 adequate authority might command a half pound of money 

 to circulate as a whole pound. Hence we have mintage 

 and seigniorage rates, and depreciations and debasements of 

 currency in all degrees. Finally, paper money dispenses 

 with the cost of any value whatever. In its usual and 

 regular form, paper money is the promise to pay the actual 

 money whenever demanded ; and where the issuing party is 

 fully trustworthy, the sign is as good as the thing sig- 

 nified, and often a greatly more convenient instrument. 

 To this " convertible paper" the inconvertible is only 

 the too evident alternative. 



These are all contrivances for supplying money below the 

 cost to the issuing party. Many quarters may be simul- 

 taneously at work with these cheap contrivances, the 

 banker as well as the government, and the forger, too, in his 

 smaller, but not less economical^ way. Can all this go on 

 indefinitely, and has money at last emancipated itself from 

 those laws of supply and demand that apply to other 

 articles, and that evidently applied to money also as one of 

 these articles before all this artificiality was introduced ? 

 Has money in short become a thing " sui generis ?" In 

 no wise whatever. Society's modes of business, and the 

 individual habits as to money-carrying, settle themselves 

 into the need of a certain amount of money, in whatever of 

 money's forms this supply may come ; and if this supply is 

 exceeded, there is simply the effect due to a relative excess 

 in the supply of anything else in the world of trade 

 materials. The excess is returned to that world of materials 

 whence it came, and if through seigniorage or other 

 obstacles it cannot be so got rid of, the money is depre- 

 ciated until it can. 



We know that money has not in all cases arisen and 

 been developed in the way here stated, namely, by unde- 

 signed tendency out of the most commonly used metals, 

 and afterwards by conventional transfer to higher-value 



