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each to other.” By a Merchant. Lond., 1695, p. 7.) “Silver and gold, coined or uncoined, though they
are used for a measure of all other things, are no less a commodity than wine, oil, tobacco, cloth, or
stuffs.” (“A Discourse concerning Trade, and that in particular of the East Indies,” &c. London, 1689,
p. 2.) “The stock and riches of the kingdom cannot properly be confined to money, nor ought gold and
silver to be excluded from being merchandise.” ("The East-India Trade a Most Profitable Trade.”
London, 1677, p. 4.)
10
L’oro e l’argento hanno valore come metalli anteriore all’esser moneta.” [“Gold and silver have
value as metals before they are money”] (Galiani, l.c.) Locke says, “The universal consent of mankind
gave to silver, on account of its qualities which made it suitable for money, an imaginary value.” Law,
on the other hand. “How could different nations give an imaginary value to any single thing... or how
could this imaginary value have maintained itself?” But the following shows how little he himself
understood about the matter: “Silver was exchanged in proportion to the value in use it possessed,
consequently in proportion to its real value. By its adoption as money it received an additional value
(une valeur additionnelle).” (Jean Law: “Considérations sur le numéraire et le commerce” in E.
Daire’s Edit. of “Economistes Financiers du XVIII siècle,” p. 470.)
11
“L’Argent en (des denrées) est le signe.” [“Money is their (the commodities’) symbol”] (V. de
Forbonnais: “Eléments du Commerce, Nouv. Edit. Leyde, 1766,” t. II., p. 143.) “Comme signe il est
attiré par les denrées.” [“As a symbol it is attracted by the commodities”] (l.c., p. 155.) “L’argent est
un signe d’une chose et la représente.” [“Money is a symbol of a thing and represents it.”]
(Montesquieu: “Esprit des Lois,” (Oeuvres, Lond. 1767, t. II, p. 2.) “L’argent n’est pas simple signe,
car il est lui-même richesse, il ne représente pas les valeurs, il les équivaut.” [“Money is not a mere
symbol, for it is itself wealth; it does not represent the values, it is their equivalents”] (Le Trosne, l.c.,
p. 910.) “The notion of value contemplates the valuable article as a mere symbol - the article counts
not for what it is, but for what it is worth.” (Hegel, l.c., p. 100.) Lawyers started long before
economists the idea that money is a mere symbol, and that the value of the precious metals is purely
imaginary. This they did in the sycophantic service of the crowned heads, supporting the right of the
latter to debase the coinage, during the whole of the middle ages, by the traditions of the Roman
Empire and the conceptions of money to be found in the Pandects. “Qu’aucun puisse ni doive faire
doute,” [“Let no one call into question,”] says an apt scholar of theirs, Philip of Valois, in a decree of
1346, “que à nous et à notre majesté royale n’appartiennent seulement ... le mestier, le fait, l’état, la
provision et toute l’ordonnance des monnaies, de donner tel cours, et pour tel prix comme il nous plait
et bon nous semble.” [“that the trade, the composition, the supply and the power of issuing ordinances
on the currency ... belongs exclusively to us and to our royal majesty, to fix such a rate and at such
price as it shall please us and seem good to us”] It was a maxim of the Roman Law that the value of
money was fixed by decree of the emperor. It was expressly forbidden to treat money as a commodity.
“Pecunias vero nulli emere fas erit, nam in usu publico constitutas oportet non esse mercem.”
[“However, it shall not be lawful to anyone to buy money, for, as it was created for public use, it is not
permissible for it to be a commodity”] Some good work on this question has been done by G. F.
Pagnini: “Saggio sopra il giusto pregio delle cose, 1751"; Custodi “Parte Moderna,” t. II. In the second
part of his work Pagnini directs his polemics especially against the lawyers.
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“If a man can bring to London an ounce of Silver out of the Earth in Peru, in the same time that he
can produce a bushel of Corn, then the one is the natural price of the other; now, if by reason of new
or more easier mines a man can procure two ounces of silver as easily as he formerly did one, the corn
will be as cheap at ten shillings the bushel as it was before at five shillings, caeteris paribus.” William
Petty. “A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions.” Lond., 1667, p. 32.
13
The learned Professor Roscher, after first informing us that “the false definitions of money may be
divided into two main groups: those which make it more, and those which make it less, than a
commodity,” gives us a long and very mixed catalogue of works on the nature of money, from which
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it appears that he has not the remotest idea of the real history of the theory; and then he moralises thus:
“For the rest, it is not to be denied that most of the later economists do not bear sufficiently in mind
the peculiarities that distinguish money from other commodities” (it is then, after all, either more or
less than a commodity!)... “So far, the semi-mercantilist reaction of Ganilh is not altogether without
foundation.” (Wilhelm Roscher: “Die Grundlagen der Nationaloekonomie,” 3rd Edn. 1858, pp. 207-
210.) More! less! not sufficiently! so far! not altogether! What clearness and precision of ideas and
language! And such eclectic professorial twaddle is modestly baptised by Mr. Roscher, “the
anatomico-physiological method” of Political Economy! One discovery however, he must have credit
for, namely, that money is “a pleasant commodity.”