Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Ways and Means of Payment: A Full Analysis of the Credit System, With Its Various Modes of Adjustment
Money, by which we intend coins of gold or silver, is neither a standard of value, a measure of value, nor a representative of value.
The precious metals are commodities of value, and do not, of course, lose that quality, though they gain another, by being coined. They become, by coinage and the law of legal tender, a standard of pay ment. Every man may, by law, claim payment in coins; that is, for any commodity previously sold, for any debt due, every person may exact the expressed equivalent in the commodity of gold and silver assayed and coined at the mint in denominations agreeing with the money of account. All debts are thus payable; and it is only be cause the parties agree to other modes of payment, that all debts are not thus paid.
There are many obstacles to the use of coins in large transactions, besides their great cost; among these, the risks of theft and robbery, and the care and anxiety which these hazards impose, the danger of counterfeits, the rapid wear and deterioration of coins, the frauds of clipping, punching, sweating, and many others, which are regarded as severe grievances and trials in all countries where an exclusively metallic currency has long prevailed. All these combined have pro duced a constant effort to escape the employment of coins in large transactions. Gold and silver coins have not lost their interest in the eyes of men; they are still the standard of payment, and universally an acceptable medium of exchange; but they are far from being the universally employed medium of exchange. The men of trade and industry, who but receive money in large amounts to pass it off in the same way, are more concerned to escape trouble, risk and expense in the matter of payment, than anxious to employ only gold and silver which have passed through the mint.
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