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Coin and Currency in [No. 9, new series, 



bona fide oxen themselves. I do not think the Marquis' view 

 correct ; but even if it be, it is more than probable that cattle were 

 employed as money at an earlier time ; the name of a coin, if 

 Homer did mean a coin, is a confirmation. The most natural and 

 obvious design for the earliest coins would be the figure of that 

 rude medium of exchange which they supplanted.* 



As intercourse became more free and commerce more extended 

 between different nations, it became necessary to employ some 

 circulating medium of intrinsic value and universal acceptability. 

 Cattle, it is true, fulfil these two conditions ; but such money was 

 too bulky and inconvenient for the purposes of even internal 

 trade, except in the very rudest stages of civilization, and still 

 more unsuitable for effecting exchanges between different, and 

 perhaps, distant countries. The close connection between even 

 internal traffic and the use of a convenient circulating medium — 

 of coin in short — is illustrated by two facts which Herodotus tells 

 us with reference to the Lydians — that they were the first people 

 who coined money, and also the first who carried on retail trades, 

 TTpwroi KCL7TrfKoi eye vovto {Herod. I. c. 94). Again, in the semi- 

 mythical account of Lycurgus' legislation, we are told that in 

 order to preserve the Spartans from the corrupting influence of 

 foreign commerce, he forbad the use of gold and silver : only- 

 permitting a medium of exchange which no one outside the limits 

 of the State would accept — which was so clumsy, too, and un- 

 wieldy, as to restrict considerably or altogether impede internal 

 traffic. The subject of iron money will come before us again. 

 The story of Lycurgus and his very eccentric Mint regulations, if 



* Alison in his History of Europe, gives a curious instance of the re- 

 vival in modern times of the primitive system of barter. In France, in 

 1796, after the excessive issue of assignats and their consequent depre- 

 ciation to so great a degree that nobody would receive them at any 

 value, (the metallic currency having almost entirely left the country), 

 all who had any fortune left invested it in luxuries which might com- 

 mand a ready sale. The richest houses were converted into magazines 

 for silks, &c., &c, and by the sale, or rather exchange of these, the 

 proprietors managed to subsist. By this means internal trade regained 

 in some degree its lost activity. 



