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first care is to lay in abundant stores, not of food and clothing, but of gold and silver, assured that with these, they can never be long in want of other articles, whatever may happen.

Without some article or articles, for which a supreme preference was felt, there could have been no adequate motive to industry; for without them, industry could have produced nothing beyond the food, clothing and shelter necessary to sustain life upon its lowest plane. There cannot, in the nature of things, be a continued or superior preference for food over clothing. Each is indispensable in its way; but a person possessed of one is not necessarily nearer any article of merchandise or property he may wish to acquire, than if he possessed the other. With either, he could only reach such article by the exchange therefor of that which he possessed. Exchanges made in this manner involve, as a rule, labor and expense greater in amount than the value of the article sought for, after it is acquired. So long, therefore, as a people have no other mode of disposing of their products, but by the exchange of one article of consumption for another, they will produce only such as they can directly consume. They will necessarily remain barbarous or savage; and every civilized society accustomed to the use of the precious metals as money, in ceasing to use them as such, inevitably tends to that condition of barbarism from which, with almost infinite toil, it has so slowly arisen.

The first step, therefore, necessary to be taken by a person possessed of property other than gold and silver, in order to reach by means of it, some other article, was to convert it into them. Such conversion is itself an act of barter; for gold and silver are merchandise equally with food and clothing: but it is the only act of barter which is certain, by one further exchange, to secure to the seller what he may wish to obtain. A person possessed of food will not necessarily have any adequate motive to exchange it for clothing, for such exchange might not advance him a single step toward the object of desire. No prudent man ever thinks of exchanging his stock of merchandise for one of other kinds, because that which he possesses does not happen to be in active demand. If it be made up of articles indispensable for consumption, he will hold it till a demand arises. He will rest assured that, sooner or later, some

one will take it off his hands at some price, to be paid in money. He may lose by holding; but he might incur a greater loss by any attempt to sell or exchange it for merchandise other than that which he wished to secure or consume, as he would be in the same dilemma in the latter case as in the former. Such an exchange, if made at all, would have to be at the estimated value of his merchandise in money, leaving him as far from a sale for cash as before the exchange was made.

If without the precious metals there could be no exchanges but in kind, still less could there be division of labor, upon which every thing deserving the name of wealth is based, and without which only the rudest fabrics can be produced. Division of labor is possible only where the laborer or workman can be paid in some article which he may not produce, but by means of which he can by direct exchange, reach any other article he may wish to acquire. If it were possible to exchange a skin for a quarter of venison, it is not possible that a person who polishes and fits the main-spring of a watch should have that which, in itself, would be received in payment for food and shelter.

All sales of merchandise, therefore, before commerce could assume any considerable dimensions, were, from the very nature of things, made payable in the precious metals. For the same reason, all contracts arising from such sales, or for labor or service, to be executed presently or in the future, were held to be payable in them, whether or not they contained such provision, not only for the purpose of securing to the party to be paid that by which he could reach by direct exchange any other article of property, but for the purpose of defining the extent of liability to be incurred on either side. If a person were to receive 1,000 bushels of wheat at the expiration of ten years, he could form no idea of what it would realize to him till it was received and sold for coin. If he were to receive $1,000 in coin in ten years, he would know its value as well when the contract was made as when it was to be executed. Its value would be the same, or very nearly the same, at either period. The wheat might not have one-half, or it might have double, the value when it was to be paid, that it had when the contract for its payment was made. Neither buyer nor seller, therefore, could with any safety enter, nor would either as a rule, enter

into contracts not presently to mature, that were not to be discharged in coin.

As the precious metals are always in demand at the cost of their production, their value is ABSOLUTE; depending upon one condition,- cost. That of all other articles is relative, depending upon two conditions, - demand and cost. From absence of demand, their value, either in the precious metals or in other articles, may not equal one-half their cost. In all transactions the former pass at their absolute value. As all other articles must take the form of the precious metals, or of that which possesses a value equivalent thereto, before they can be made available to their owners; and must be accepted in exchange, at their absolute value in gold and silver, the latter must be the STANDARD of value by which that of all other articles is measured. As they are money by virtue of their value, they are standards of value by virtue of the same attribute. When they pass as money, the standard, as well as the instrument of exchange, passes in the same article, by the same act. The thing itself, unlike a foot-rule or pound weight, is the standard, the measure of value. Other measures, those of extent or quantity, do not pass in the sale of that which they measure. The value of such measures has no relation whatever to that of the articles measured. But money, the medium of exchange, and money the measure or standard of value, are identical things. The words that express them are, in the strictest sense, synonymous terms.

From what has preceded, the transcendent importance of the precious metals in the development and progress of society will be at once appreciated. They are the instruments, and the only ones, by virtue of their being the highest form of capital, the universal equivalents, which render possible the very first step towards a higher life. They are the foundation upon which rests the vast superstructure of civilized society.

1 The term, "medium of exchange," is one of recent origin, growing out of the use of paper money, from which the idea of value has become in great measure dissociated. So long as exchanges were effected in kind, one article of consumption being exchanged for another, each were equally "media of exchange." The term, as ordinarily used, is one of the great stumbling blocks in the way of a proper elucidation or understanding of the subject of money. It is one of Bacon's "Idols of the Market."

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Without them there could have been no exchanges, no wealth, no government, no institutions, no history; nothing but the eternal iteration of savage or barbarous existence. The moment they are disused, society is without any adequate standard by which the value of its industries can be measured. Without them, utter chaos would at once take the place of the order which now conducts to prosperous ends the industry of every laborer, whether he be a cotton-spinner in England, a farmer raising wheat on the banks of the Missouri, a cultivator of tea in China, a grower of rice on the banks of the Ganges or the Nile, or of sugar in Brazil, - - and awards to each an exact compensation, measured by a common standard, for the value of his contribution to the general stock from which all are fed and sustained. With them, a people, consuming the products of another, have no need to inquire what those of their own industries will bring in the countries from which their imports are to be made, but only what their own products are worth in the precious metals, at their own doors. By their means, at the close of each day, the most unlettered, equally with the most intelligent and learned, can measure exactly the value of his industries, and apply the necessary corrective, should it be found that they had not been properly directed or sufficiently remunerative. As without such standards there could be neither industry, wealth, nor civilization, the inference is irresistible that the universal demand for the precious metals at their cost, and the uniformity of their supply, are, equally with moral laws, part of God's providence with man.

As gold and silver are capital as well as money, and are always in demand to serve as the basis of reproduction, either by their conversion into forms other than that of coin, or in exchange for food, implements, and the like, every one possessed of them, where governments are sufficiently strong to enforce the fulfilment of contracts, will seek to loan whatever he may have in excess of his own immediate wants, for the income they will yield. The opportunity for loaning them at usury does not depend, as is too often supposed, upon the necessities of governments or individuals for capital for their ordinary expenditures, but upon the uses to which they can be profitably applied. The greater the progress made in knowledge, and in the arts and sciences; the more perfect

the means of production and distribution, the greater must be the disproportion of capital to the demand that must exist for it; the more powerful the motives to industry and toil, and the higher the rates of interest which borrowers can afford to pay. From the material progress that has been made within the last fifty years, a significance and value have been given to capital never before known. That it must steadily increase in importance rests upon the fact that God is Infinite and man finite. The mission of man is to unfold His laws, and render them the instruments in promoting his own welfare. The greater his progress, the wider the field spread out before him. Every step he takes becomes an incentive and an aid to the next. The more he achieves in any direction, the stronger the motive and the greater the power for new acquisitions. Every new discovery is a fresh demand for capital. I need only refer to the vast sums now called for, for the purpose of utilizing the discoveries which the present generation has made in electricity, and the almost infinite sums yet required for the full development of that mighty force upon which seem to rest all the phenomena of the universe.

When loans of the precious metals could be safely made at usury, a principle or element of almost infinite value and power was introduced into human affairs. With gold and silver to serve as the instruments of exchange, the means of acquisition were for the first time given to the race. By loans of them, with interest payable in kind, its acquisitions could be treasured up, and be made to bear fruit for all coming time. Until interest could be obtained for their use, every person retained whatever he acquired, in his possession, until forced by his necessities to part with them. So soon as they could be safely loaned, no one would keep the possession of an amount greater than that required for his immediate wants. Thenceforth the whole face of society was changed. Order and good government were the conditions necessary to induce the possessors of capital to loan it, for they were the only conditions under which the borrowers could prosecute their industries in a manner which would enable them to repay their loans. Order and good government, consequently, have in modern times. been the work of the industrial and commercial classes. The moral well-being of mankind rests upon its material well-being. In the promotion of both, the precious metals, with loans of

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