apkil — sept. 1859.] Ancient and Modern times. 



63 



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 curious 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 ' 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 

 which 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 fioes were coins stamped with the figure of an ox, not 



