them at usury, stand forth as the prime and paramount factors.

With loans of the precious metals at interest, their possessor could not only make provision for himself, and for his family after his decease, but he could found institutions for the culture of learning, of art, of science, or for the support of some charity, provisions that should suffer no abatement, but secure the same results one hundred or one thousand years after his death, as during his lifetime and under his own supervision. In other words, he could invest himself, as it were, with the attributes of immortality. He could make no such provisions by dedicating thereto great stores of food and clothing. All such articles are speedily perishable, so that with an abundance of both, unless exchanged for gold and silver, their possessor might presently come to want. No permanent foundation, therefore, can be made, resting upon such kinds of property. Should such an attempt be made, no one could ever be found who would receive them on loans, agreeing to pay for their use interest in kind, to pay, for example, six bushels of wheat, annually, for a loan of one hundred bushels. He would not run the risk of the fluctuations in its value; or he might wish to change his residence to countries or districts, from which the cost of sending wheat to the place of payment might exceed many times its value. It is impossible, therefore, that there should be any other final solvents of transactions but the precious metals, while human nature is what it is. No commercial people ever have adopted, nor will they ever voluntarily adopt, standards of value other than those Providentially appointed. If other standards are ever used, it is only because governments interpose to set aside natural laws. But all such attempts prove in the end utterly futile; for no government can long compel the people to act in direct violation of their highest interests. However great the departure, the natural standards will always be returned to; but often, unfortunately, not until both government and people are involved in common ruin.

As soon as any considerable progress had been made in commerce and trade, contracts to pay money would be authenticated by convenient and proper instruments. The transfer of these would operate to transfer that which they represented. With the progress of social order, some of these instruments, for

greater convenience, would be made payable to their possessor or bearer, and would transfer, by mere delivery, their constituents. In this way, bills of exchange representing merchandise; promissory notes; and, later, notes of banks and bankers payable on demand to bearer, came into use.

While exchanges of property must always be made at the standard of the precious metals, it by no means follows that they may not be made without their actual intervention. Their use is always an act of barter, in which equivalents in value are mutually exchanged. There is no generic distinction whatever, between an exchange in which a barrel of flour is given for a hat, and one in which ten gold dollars are given for it. The first may be termed simple barter, as articles which each party may produce are directly exchanged. But the use of gold and silver involves two exchanges before a party possessing merchandise can reach that which he may wish to acquire, the exchange, for example, of the barrel of flour for ten gold dollars, and the exchange of ten gold dollars for the hat. The latter process, therefore, may be termed double barter; for in it a third agent, or factor, has to be present, which is not, in the function it performs or in the manner in which it is used at the moment, the subject of consumption.

When the vast magnitude of the transactions now taking place is considered, the importance of eliminating from them an agent or factor having a value equal to the articles exchanged will be readily appreciated. The value of the merchandise moving between Great Britain and the United States equals many hundreds of millions annually. Were the precious metals required to move between them as currency, in equal volume, the interest on so vast a sum would have to be added to the price of the merchandise to be paid by the consumer. To this would have to be added the loss by attrition, estimated as high as one per cent annually; and the cost of its transportation which would equal many millions every year. But such burdens might be by no means the greatest of those resulting from an attempt to effect all the exchanges of property by the use of a metallic currency. The hope of seizing it in transit would cover every sea with pirates, from whose vigilance none could escape, and whom no punishment would deter.

Instead of sailing singly, a large number of vessels would have to go in company, convoyed by powerful ships of war. Were all the payments within the same community to be made in it, a file of porters, guarded by soldiers, would be required by every great merchant where an office-boy now suffices. Had no mode been devised of effecting exchanges but by the actual intervention of the precious metals, commerce and trade would not have reached one-tenth their present colossal proportions.

The manner in which the use of gold and silver are discharged from transactions between nations, and between communities widely separated, comes within the experience of almost every man of affairs. An importer in the city of New York does not accompany his order upon a manufacturer in England with the corresponding amount of coin, * but buys of

Coinage — by means of which pieces of metal receive an impress denoting their weight and fineness, consequently their value, and which has been adopted by all civilized nations is of comparatively recent origin. No traces of it have been found among the remains of Assyrian or Egyptian art; and Egyptian civilization, running through periods far greater than those which measure the life of subsequent nations, had begun to decline before coinage was used. Among all the ancient nations, including the Hebrews and Phoenicians, as well as the Assyrians and Egyptians, the precious metals passed by weight. When Abraham weighed out at Ephron the silver which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth,- "four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant," he undoubtedly used scales and denominations of weight common to the whole East. The language indicates as thorough a familiarity with the use of money as does that used in financial newspaper articles of the present day. So Joseph gave to Benjamin "three hundred pieces of silver." These pieces were undoubtedly of very nearly equal weight, consequently of value. The word piece had a significance precisely similar to that which we attach to the word dollar.

The invention of coinage has been usually ascribed to Pheidon, who reigned about 750 B.C., in the island of Ægina, a dependency of Argos, and at that time one of the greatest commercial emporiums of Greece. Previous to its invention, the form in which the precious metals were used as money was that of pins, or wires, silver being the metal chiefly employed. Of these, a certain number made a conventional handful, or drachma. This form was gradually exchanged for that of solid pieces, or wedges, which may be considered as a step toward coinage. To secure pieces of uniform value, coinage was properly made a function of government, its insignia or stamp being the proper guaranty for the value of the coins uttered. The Æginian scale, as it was termed, was adopted in Peloponnesus, in all the Dorian States, in Boeotia, Thessaly, Macedonia, and throughout Northern Greece. Another scale, however, soon arose, called the Euboeic, which was adopted in Athens, and in the Ionic States generally, as well as in Euboea. Their denominations were the same, - 100 drachmas to the mina, and 60 mine to the talent, but the value, by weight, of the scale of the latter to the former was as six to five.

a neighbor shipping breadstuffs to that country a bill drawn against such shipment, paying the value of such bill or shipment in the local currency of the city, at the standard of coin, and sends it forward in the place of so much money. The English manufacturer collects the proceeds of the same in the local currency of that country, and credits his New York customer with the amount. The use of such bill, in the manner described, obviates that of a corresponding amount of capital in the form of money. Proceedings reciprocally the same are had by an English importer of American produce. In this way, by the use of bills, merchandise is offset against merchandise, and payments are made thereby as effectually as if made in money. If the exports of the two countries, the one to the other, were the same in value, no money-coin, or bullion would move in the operations between them, no matter how great their magnitude. It would only move when there was a want of bills, and consequently of merchandise, to make good the deficit of those kinds which are the ordinary subjects of consumption. The balance arising on either side would be a debt for which the creditor, for the reasons already described, would receive nothing but gold and silver, the highest form

From Greece coinage was first introduced into Egypt, by the successors of Alexander the Great, about 300 B.C. It was not until about 150 B.C. that Antiochus gave permission to Simon Maccabæus to coin money "with his own stamp." This is the first instance of coinage among the Hebrews. Through the Greek colonies, which were numerous along the shores of the Mediterranean, the art was gradually diffused throughout the then known world. As coinage gradually came into universal use; as every nation, as well as almost every community of any considerable importance, had its mint, - a vast number and variety of coins were issued; and as the impress they received commemorated events, or symbolized ideas or sentiments, and as great numbers have come down to us, they have proved of almost inestimable value in illustrating ancient history and life.

While all communities and nations have entertained a similar sentiment in reference to the desirableness or value of the precious metals -a sentiment which transcends all agreement or concert between them - they no sooner came to the subordinate matter of coinage than they were as wide apart as the poles. Nothing could be more convenient than a coinage common to all nations; yet nothing can be more dissimilar than the denominations of their money. It does not seem probable that they will ever be any better agreed in this matter than now. If money, as all writers have claimed, be an invention, why was not a common standard of coinage invented at the same time? That all nations are agreed upon the value of money, and none upon the forms or denominations to be used, although uniformity in this respect is a matter of very great importance, is of itself suffi cient evidence that the value of the metals from which it is coined, rests upon a law far higher than the convenience of their use as media of exchange.

of capital. All balances arising in commerce, the world over, are held to be payable in the same manner. Every transaction, therefore, is upon the basis of coin, as to value, even when it does not interpose, and all balances have to be actually paid in it, or in promises to pay it, coupled with an agreement to pay interest for any forbearance of present payment.

The exchanges, therefore, between communities widely separated are now in great measure effected, not by the use of the precious metals, but by symbols, or evidences, of merchandise moving between them. Such symbols, or evidences, serve as money equally with coin. They perform in the exchange of merchandise precisely the functions of coin. A bill, for example, drawn by a competent party in San Francisco against a shipment of breadstuffs to Hamburg, is purchased by a merchant or banker in the former city for remittance to New York in place of a corresponding amount of coin. The New York merchant or banker credits his San Francisco customer with the amount as so much coin, and sells the bill to a party having a payment to make in Manchester, England. From Manchester it is again purchased for remittance, as cash, to London. From London it is remitted to Paris, whence it is sent for collection to its place of payment. In the mean time, it has served, by virtue of what it represented, in the hands of each holder, all the functions of coin which, but for such bill, would have had to follow in equal amount, in its track. The actual price at which the bill would be taken, in the place of coin, at the several places in which it was used, would be greater or less than its nominal value, depending upon the state of exchanges, and the time it had to run, — interest being always charged, or deducted, for such time.

Bills of exchange, consequently, serve as money between. communities widely separated, for the reason that their transfer operates as the transfer of that which they represent. It is plain to see that their use is the only mode by which the value of exports could be made immediately available. Without them, such exports would be so much dead capital till they were delivered to the purchasers or consumers, and the proceeds of the same collected and paid over. By means of them, by their sale, the exporter of merchandise can, as soon as they are drawn, convert the value of that which they represent into money. A currency of bills, therefore, is in a normal and