3."Money may continually vary in value,and yet be as good a measure of value as if it remained perfectly stationary.Suppose,for example,it is reduced in value....Before the reduction,a guinea would purchase three bushels of wheat or six days'labour,subsequently,it would purchase only two bushels of wheat,or four days'labour.In both these cases,the relations of wheat and labour to money being given,their mutual relations can be inferred;in other words,we can ascertain that a bushel of wheat is worth two days'labour.This,which is all that measuring value implies,is as readily done after the reduction as before.The excellence of any thing as a measure of value is altogether independent of its own variableness in value"(Samuel Bailey,Money and its Vicissitudes ,London,1837,pp.9,10).
4."The coins whose names are now only imaginary are the oldest coins of every nation;all their names were for a time real"(so generally stated the latter assertion is incorrect)"and precisely because they were real they were used for calculation"(Galiani,Della Moneta ,op.cit.,p.
153).
5.The romantic A.Müller says:"According to our views every independent sovereign has the right to introduce metallic currencv and ascribe to it a social nominal value,order,position and title"(Adam H.Müller,Die Elemente der Staatskunst,Berlin,1809,Band II,p.288).The aulic councillor is right as regards the title,but he forgets the content .
How confused his "views"are becomes evident,for instance,in the following passage:"Everybody realises how important it is to determine the price of coins correctly,especially in a country like England,where the government with splendid generosity coins money gratuitously"(Mr.Müller apparently assumes that the members of the British government defray the costs of minting out of their own pocket),"where it does not levy seigniorage,etc.,and consequently if it were to fix the mint-price of gold considerably above the-market-price,if instead of paying £317s.101/2d.for an ounce of gold as at present,it should decide to fix the price of an ounce of gold at £319s.,all money would flow into the mint and the silver obtained there would be exchanged for the cheaper gold on the market,and then it would again be taken to the mint,thus throwing the monetary system into disorder"(op.cit.,pp.280,281).Müller throws his ideas into "disorder",so as to preserve order at the mint in England.
Whereas shillings and pence are merely names,that is names of definite fractions of an ounce of gold represented by silver and copper tokens,he imagines that an ounce of gold is estimated in terms of gold,silver and copper and thus confers upon the English a triple standard of value.
Silver as the standard of money along with gold was formally abolished only in 1816by 56George III,C.68,although it was in fact legally abolished by 14George 11,C.42in 1734,and in practice even earlier.Two circumstances in particular enabled A.Müller to arrive at a so-called higher conception of political economy:first his extensive ignorance of economic facts and second his purely amateurish infatuation with philosophy.
6."When Anacharsis was asked what the Hellenes used money for he replied --for calculation"(Athenaeus,Deipnosophistai,L.IV,49v.II,[p.120],ed.Schweighauser,1802).
7.G.
Garnier,one of the first to translate Adam Smith into French,had the odd idea of establishing the proportion between the use of money of account and that of real money.[According to him]this proportion is lO to 1(G.
Garnier,Histoire de la monnaie depais les temps de la plus haute antiquité,t.I,p.78).
8.The Act of Maryland of 1723,which made tobacco legal currency but converted its value into English gold money,by declaring a pound of tobacco equal to a penny,recalls the leges barbarorum,which on the contrary equated definite sums of money with oxen,cows,etc.In this case the real material of the money of account was neither gold nor silver,but the ox and the cow.
9.Thus we read,for example,in the Familiar Words of Mr.David Urquhart --"The value of gold is to be measured by itself;how can any substance be the measure of its own worth in other things?The worth of gold is to be established by its own weight,under a false denomination of that weight --and an ounce is to be worth so many 'pounds'and fractions of pounds.This is falsifying a measure,not establishing a standard"[pp.
104-05].
10.Earlier editions of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy erroneously gave this figure as £14,704,000.--Ed.
11.Money is the measure of commerce...and therefore ought to be kept (as all other measures)as steady and invariable as may be.But this cannot be,if your money be made of two metals,whose proportion ...constantly varies in respect of one another"(John Locke,Some Considerations on the Lowering of Interest ,1691;in his Works ,7th Edition,London,1768,Vol.II,p.65.
