, 1896-10-10

from the "teeter-board," in the follow
ing words: There is another seeming
consequence of the reducing of money
to a low price. which at first sight has
such an appearance of truth in it, that
| have known it to impose upon very
able men. and that is that lowering Of
interest against which he was writ
ing) will raise the value OF all other
things in proportion. For money, be-
ing the counter-balance to all other
things p~urchasable by it, and lying. as
it were, in the opposite scale of COM
merce, it looks like a natural conse-
quence. that as much as you take off
from the value of money. so much you
add to the price of other things hat
are exchanged for it. The mis-
take of this plausible way of reasoning
will be easily discovered, when we con-
slider that the measure of the value Of
money, in proportion to anything pur-
chasable by it, is the quantity Of the
ready money we have in comparison
with the quantity of that thing and it's
vent. tby vent" he means demand in
its relation to supply, 'or which
amounts to the same thing. the price of
any commodity rises or falls by the
proportion Of buyers and sellers" In
other words, the ratio which de-
termines prices is not the ratio between
money and property, but the ratio be-
tween the number of producers and
that of consumers of any article in the
market. The ratio is not affected. di-
rectly or indirectly, by the volume Of
the currency. Money" he says.
serves us commonly by its exchange.
never almost by it's consumption"
And he adds, in direct contradiction to
the theory held and promulgated by
Mr.. Bryan that the only honest dollar
is a standard dollar): Though the use
men make of money be not in :. .
sumption. yet it has not at all a more
standing, settled value. in exchange
with any other thing, than any other
commodity has"
The idea that legislation has power
to alter the value Of money moves him
to mirth. These men," he says, have
found out by a cunning project how, by
the restraint of a law, to make the price
of money one-third cheaper, and then
they tell John A. Nokes that he shall
ave 10000 of it to employ in
merchandise or clothing: and John A.
Stiles shall have ego, 900 more to pay
his debts. and so distribute this money
az freely as Diego did his legacies,
which they are to have, even where they
can get them. But till these men can
Instruct the forward borrowers where
they shall be furnished, they have per-
haps done something to increase mems
desires. but not made money one jot
to come by; and, till they do that,
all this sweet juggling of money in their
discourses just goes to the tune of IF
all the world were oatmeal"
This is all very interesting and in
structive, but the interest for us here
and now of Locke's teachings OF the
subject Of money eliminates in his dis
cussion of the nature and effect of
clipping or raising" coin. Money is
raised" in the sense which he at
taches to the word, when its nominal
value exceeds its actual value. What
he means by raised coin is what we
mean by deprecated coin. Whenever
coin has two values, one actual and
one nominal, we may of curse fix our
minds upon either; the nominal value
is raised, when the actual value falls.
Clipping was an unauthorized method
Of raising coin, closely allied to
counterfefting. Every student of Eng
lish history knows that it was once so
common and serious an evil as to de-
mand the severest measures for its re-
preston. so that 1t was treated as a
capital offence, being such an encroach-
upon the prerogative of the crown
Is to smack of veritable reason. Any
in the legal standard OF