good authors, and the means and advisability of rendering good books generally accessible, and directing the reader's choice to them.
20. (v.) Works of art. The value of these is of the same nature as that of books; but the laws of their production and possible modes of distribution are very different, and require separate examination.
21. II.—Money. Under this head, we shall have to examine the laws of currency and exchange; of which I will note here the first separate principles.
Money has been inaccurately spoken of as merely a means of exchange. But it is far more than this. It is a documentary expression of legal claim. It is not wealth, but a documentary claim to wealth, being the sign of the relative quantities of it, or of the labour producing it, to which, at a given time, persons, or societies, are entitled.
If all the money in the world, notes and gold, were destroyed in an instant, it would leave the world neither richer nor poorer than it was. But it would leave the individual inhabitants of it in different relations.
Money is, therefore, correspondent in its
