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[50] Steuart, l. c., v. II., p. 154.
[51] The Querist, l. c., (p. 5-6-7.) The "Queries on Money" are generally clever. Among other things Berkeley is perfectly right in saying that by their progress the North American colonies "make it plain as daylight, that gold and silver are not so necessary for the wealth of a nation, as the vulgar of all ranks imagine."
[52] Price means here real equivalent in the sense commonly employed by English economic writers in the seventeenth century.
[53] Steuart, l. c., v. II., p. 154, 299 [1st London edition, of 1767, v. I., p. 526-531. Transl.].
[54] On the occasion of the last commercial crisis the ideal African money received loud praise from certain English quarters, after its seat was this time moved from the coast to the heart of Barbary. The freedom of the Berbers from commercial and industrial crises was ascribed to the ideal unit of measure of their bars. Would it not have been simpler to say that trade and industry are the conditio sine qua non of commercial and industrial crises?
[55] The Currency Question, The Gemini Letters, London, 1844, p. 260-272, passim.
[56] John Gray: "The Social System. A Treatise on the Principle of Exchange, Edinburgh, 1831." Compare with "Lectures on the Nature and Use of Money, Edinburgh, 1848," by the same author. After the February revolution Gray sent a memorial to the provisional French government, in which he instructs the latter that France is not in need of an "organization of labour," but of an "organization of exchange" of which the plan is fully worked out in his money system. Honest John did not suspect that sixteen years after the appearance of his "Social System" a patent for the same discovery would be taken out by the ingenious Proudhon.
[57] Gray, "The Social System," etc., p. 63: "Money should be merely a receipt, an evidence that the holder of it has either contributed certain value to the national stock of wealth or that he has acquired a right to the same value from some one who has contributed to it."
[58] An estimated value being previously put upon produce, let it be lodged in a bank, and drawn out again, whenever it is required, merely stipulating, by common consent, that he who lodges any kind of property in the proposed National Bank, may take out of it an equal value of whatever it may contain, instead of being obliged to draw out the self-same thing that he put in." L. c., p. 68.
[59] L. c., p. 16.
[60] Gray: "Lectures on Money, etc.," p. 182.
[61] L. c., p. 169.
[62] "The business of every country ought to be conducted on a national capital." John Gray, "The Social System," etc., p. 171.
[63] "The land to be transformed into national property." L. c., p. 298.
[64] See e. g. W. Thompson: "An Inquiry into the Distribution of Wealth, etc.," London, 1827. Bray, "Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy," Leeds, 1839.
[65] Alfred Darimont's "De la Reforme des banques," Paris, 1856, may be considered as a compendium of this melodramatic theory of money.
[66] "Di due sorte la moneta, ideale e reale; e a dui diversi usi adoperata, a valutare le cose e a comperarle. Per valutare buona la moneta ideale, cosi come la reale e forse anche pi. L'altro uso della moneta di comperare quelle cose istesse, ch'ella apprezza ... i prezzi e i contratti si valutano in moneta ideale e si eseguiscono in moneta reale." Galiani, l. c., p. 112 sq. ("Money is of two kinds, ideal and real; and is adapted to two different uses: to determine the value of things and to buy them. For the purpose of valuation ideal money is as good as real and perhaps even better. The other use of money is to buy the same things which it appraises ... prices and contracts are determined in ideal money and are executed in real money.")
[67] This, of course, does not prevent the market price of commodities to be above or below their value. However, this consideration is foreign to simple circulation and belongs to quite another sphere to be considered later, when we shall investigate the relation between value and market price.
[68] How deeply some beautiful souls are wounded by the merely superficial aspect of the antagonism which asserts itself in buying and selling, may be seen from the following abstract from M. Isaac Pereire's: "Leons sur l'industrie et les finances," Paris, 1832. The fact that the same Isaac in his capacity of inventor and dictator of the "Credit mobilier" has acquired the reputation of the wolf of the Paris Bourse shows what lurks behind the sentimental criticism of economics. Says Mr. Pereire at the time an apostle of St. Simons: "C'est parceque tous les individus sont isols, spars les uns des autres, soit dans leur travaux, soit pour la consommation, qu'il y a echange entre eux des produits de leur industrie respective. De la necessit de l'change est derive la necessit de determiner la valeur relative des objets. Les ides de la valeur et de l'change sont donc intimement lies, et toutes deux dans leur forme actuelle exprime l'individualisme et l'antagonisme.... Il n'y a lieu a fixer la valeur des produits que parcequ'il y a vente at achat, en d'autres termes, antagonisme entre les divers membres de la societ. Il n'y a lieu s'occuper du prix, de valeur que l o il y avait vente et echat, c'est dire, o chaque individu tait oblig de lutter, pour se procurer les object ncessaires a l'entretien de son existence" (l. c., p. 2, 3 passim). ("Since individuals are isolated and separated from one another both in their labors and in consumption, exchange takes place between them in the products of their respective industries. From the necessity of exchange arises the necessity of determining the relative value of things. The ideas of value and exchange are thus intimately connected and both express in their actual form individualism and antagonism.... The determination of values of products takes place only because there are sales and purchases, or, to put it differently, because there is an antagonism between different members of society. One has to occupy himself with price and value only where there is sale and purchase, that is to say, where every individual is obliged to struggle to procure for himself the objects necessary for the maintenance of his existence.")
