\paiL — sept. 1859.] Ancient and Modern times. 68 



form or other. When a people is once sufficiently elevated above 

 the level of primitive barbarism to perceive the disadvantage 

 of every man's being his own mason, carpenter and tailor— to 

 feel and duly appreciate the increase in both the quantity and 

 the quality of conveniences and comforts, consequent on the divi- 

 sion of labour — it cannot fail, soon afterwards or even perhaps 

 simultaneously, to be conscious of the want of a circulating me- 

 dium; that is, some commodity of value either intrinsic or con- 

 ventional, obtainable in sufficient quantities for effecting all the 

 exchanges to be transacted, sufficiently divisible for the conveni- 

 ence of all classes of traders, and sufficiently durable to admit of 

 being stored up when not required for immediate use. Such are 

 the principal essential attributes of " money." 



In a rude and early state of society these conditions would be 

 fulfilled by some necessary article of food or clothing. Even after 

 a foreign commerce had sprung up, some staple commodity of ex- 

 port would answer the purposes of internal trade. Adam Smith 

 gives some curi u* examples of rude media of exchange, which 

 will serve to illustrate what I have said. " Salt is said to be the 

 common instrument of commerce and exchanges in Abyssinia ; a 

 species of shells in some parts of the coast of India ; dried cod at 

 Newfoundland; tobacco in Virginia ; sugar in some of our West 

 India Colonies ; hides or dressed leather in some other countries ; 

 and there is at this day a village in Scotland where it is not un- 

 common, I am told, for a workman to carry nails, instead of mo- 

 ney, to the baker's shop or the ale house." 



As cattle principally constituted wealth in primitive ages, so 

 they most probably were the first 6 money' — inconvenient and rude, 

 but forming a connecting link between pure barter and the use of 

 a recognised circulating medium. Adam Smith, in the passage of 

 tthich I have quoted a part, enumerates cattle amongst the earli- 

 est examples of money, and quotes Homer's account of the inter- 

 view between Glaucus and Diomede in support of the fact. Their 

 respective suits of armour are there expressly valued at 100 beeves 

 and 9. The Marquis Gamier, in a note to his Translation of the 

 wealth of Nations, asserts that Smith misinterprets the passage — 

 that the /3oes were coins stamped with the figure of an ox, not 



