ferring those debts to others. On the other hand, to the same extent as the system of credit is extended, so is the function of money as a means of payment. In that character it takes various forms peculiar to itself under which it makes itself at home in the sphere of great commercial transactions. Gold and silver coin, on the other hand, are mostly relegated to the sphere of retail trade.[1]
When the production of commodities has sufficiently extended itself, money begins to serve as the means of payment beyond the sphere of the circulation of commodities. It becomes the commodity that is the universal subject-matter of all contracts.[2] Rents, taxes, and such like payments are transformed from payments in kind into money payments. To what extent this transformation depends upon the general conditions of production, is shown, to take one example, by the fact that the Roman Empire twice failed in its attempt to levy all contributions in money. The unspeakable misery of the French agricultural population under Louis XIV., a misery so eloquently denounced by Boisguillebert, Marshal, Vauban, and others, was due not only to the weight of the taxes, but also to the conversion of taxes in kind into money taxes.[3]
- ↑ As an example of how little ready money is required in true commercial operations, I give below a statement by one of the largest London houses of its yearly receipts and payments. Its transactions during the year 1856, extending to many millions of pounds sterling, are here reduced to the scale of one million.
Receipts. Payments. Bankers' and Merchant's Bills payable after date, £533,596 Bills payable after date. £302,674 Cheques on Bankers', &c., payable on demand, 357,715 Cheques on London Bankers, 663,672 Country Notes, 9,627 Bank of England Notes, 22,743 Bank of England Notes, 68,554 Gold, 9,427 Gold, 29,089 Silver and Copper, 1,484 Silver and Copper, 1,486 Post Office Orders, 933
Total, £1,000,000 Total, £1,000,000 "Report from the Select Committee on the Bank Acts, July, 1858," p. lxxi.
- ↑ "The course of trade being thus turned, from exchanging of goods for goods, or delivering and taking, to selling and paying, all the bargains … are now stated upon the foot of a price in money." ("An Essay upon Publick Credit." 3rd Ed. Lond., 1710, p. 8.)
- ↑ "L'argent … est devenu le bourreau de toutes choses." Finance is the "alambic, qui a fait évaporer une quantité effroyable de biens et de denrées pour
