The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1894-09-28
QUESTIONS OF THE
DAY.
The rIoney of Antiqu ity.

took to show the outrageous extent
to which the organized money
changers carried gambling in coins,
first by debasement, mutilations
and selections, and next by usu-
rious methods; all of which has
been the real basis of the present
monetary misery. [ now come to
discuss the plan of general and
vast reform that is to be made cap
able of undermining the incentives
of the gamblers practic. CuriOusly
enough, the reformer who hit this
plan was himself professional
gambler. But he struck the bottom
of the plan which the whole think
ing, honest, and gambling
world is swiftly settling down to as
the true scientific and final solution
of the money problem. The plan is
that of basing the value of money
of peoples upon the products of
their industry, the issue to be made
by their government.
That man was John Law, the
"worst abused man that ever
lived" yet of whom the great En-
cyclopedia Britannica says that
''his system would supply the
nation with abundance of money
and would have many advantages
over silver" / have all through
these numbers shown that this
kind of money is no new thing, and
that it had many times been tried
in one form or another as emergency
money, but was as many times dis
continued when the emergency was
over. The ushering in of the
Eighteenth Century saw true
movement toward its permanent
establishment.
John Law, of Lauriston, was one
of the principal usherers. | leave
to Theirs, Wood, Irving, and the
cyclopedias an account of Law.
This should be qualified, however,
with the remark that after their
usual TRADES ON him about profos-
sional gambling, numbering a man
in a duel, being the author of the
''great Mississippi Bubble' and a
multitude of similar terrors, wind
up with talk like this: Gin 100 he
published work advocating the
establishment of a bank which
should hold all the sources of rev.
enue of the state in its own hands,
and, treating them as capital, issue
notes, etc." Aye, and just that is
what he did in France, and for a
time it was success. But when
the feudal tinanciers ruined his
government money and drove him
to starvation because they could
not speculate on a money that was
based on the values created by the
peoples labor and managed and
issued by their government, they
only did what they are ferociously
repeating to-day. They set upon
it and it's author and drove them
both to their wreck. This is exactly
what they are doing to-day when
the people are making desperate
effort to rehabilitate the money Of
John Law.
: This money was to all intents and
, purposes the same used in Penn.
! sylvania in 1928, whereby" says
, Franklin, "the province has SC
greatly increased in inhabitants
that the exports from thence
thither 0o England) is more than
tenfOld what it then was." Law
was unable to get his plan into pure
operation. 1t was beset from the
first, and against his will, by the
plaguy interference of the joint
stock company. Nevertheless, the
: Encyclopedia Britannica says;
"The bank was a great and imme
date success" Later it was agair
beset aud ruined by the Quesnay
physiOcrats, who made an abortivt
effort to build up the French finan
ces through single tax ON land
} tried by Turgot, Calonne, and
Necker. This brought starvation
to the pitch of bread riot and the
states-general, winding up with the
FIench revolution. All Other
schemes to supply France with q
normal form of money proving
failures, the plan started by Law
in its imperfect form returned il
1.-THE form of the aSSipnatS which