372 
DUTTON. 
evil or not. The answer, I think, is that a sudden apprecia¬ 
tion or depreciation of the standard of value would always 
be a shock or stress to the economic system, and any violent 
change of this kind is for a time detrimental; but a slow 
and steady change in the standard is a matter of such small 
importance that it exerts no appreciable effect. It is like 
the effect of the rise and fall of the tide upon a ship, which 
is unfelt as she tosses and labors in the swell of the ocean. 
There are numberless causes acting upon prices and tending 
to disturb them which are incomparably more potent than 
any possible change in the value of gold could ever be :—a 
change of freight tariffs or of the rate of discounts, an im¬ 
proved machine, a very favorable or unfavorable crop, and 
many other causes would exercise a much more powerful 
influence. The objection to “ a change in the standard of 
value ” is proportional to the rapidity of the change. 
Hitherto I have spoken of money only in the ordinary 
sense of the currency or the circulating medium. I have 
done so to avoid unnecessary complication; but we may 
now advert to the fact that the exchanges of this country 
and of some others are in much the greatest part effected by 
other devices. As nearly as can be estimated, about 4 
per cent, of the exchanges of the country are effected by the 
direct payment of money. The rest is effected by transfers 
of credit on account. It is not a little interesting to note 
that in the later evolution of the methods of exchanges the 
civilized world is reverting more and more to barter—not, 
indeed, of the simple and primitive form of antiquity, but 
an elaborate and highly developed form involving the funda¬ 
mental principle of barter. In fact, the use of money is 
gradually being narrowed down to those exchanges in which 
the use of credit is impracticable, and there is a powerful 
tendency to the use of the minimum amount of money with 
which it is possible to effect exchanges, and there is an equal 
tendency to make the efficiency of money as great as 
possible. 
To show how money seeks a minimum of quantity and a 
