the qualities of that other. Thus, what measures weight must have weight; what measures extent must have the same quality. But what quality has an abstract idea by which it can measure the value of a horse, for example, or of a quarter of corn? Even the fact on which Mr Smith grounds his whimsical notion, is incorrect, and is one of those erroneous statements of ill-informed and superficial travellers, to which Montesquieu too readily lent his ear. Our own more intelligent countryman, Park, whose fate there is so much reason to deplore, has given us a most satisfactory account of this supposed phenomenon. In thus bartering,' says he, (see Travels in Africa, p. 27.) one commodity for another, many inconveniences must necessarily have arisen at first, from the want of coined money, or some other visible and determinate medium, to settle the balance or difference of value between different articles; to remedy which, the natives of the interior make use of small shells, called cowries. On the coast, the inhabitants have adopted a practice which I believe is peculiar to themselves. In their early intercourse with Europeans, the article that attracted most notice was iron. Its utility in forming the instruments of war and husbandry, made it preferable to all others; and iron soon became the measure by which the value of all other commodities was ascertained. Thus, a certain quantity of goods, of whatever denomination, appearing to be equal in value to a bar of iron, constituted, in the trader's phraseology, a bar of that particular merchandise. Twenty leaves of tobacco, for instance, were considered as a bar of tobacco; and a gallon of spirits (or rather half spirits and half water) as a bar of rum; a bar of one commodity being reckoned equal to a bar of another commodity. As, however, it must unavoidably happen, that, according to the plenty or scarcity of goods at market, in proportion to the demand, the relative value would be subject to continual fluctuations, greater precision has been found necessary; and, at this time, the current value of a single bar of any kind, is fixed by the whites at two shillings Sterling. Thus, a slave, whose price is 15. is said to be worth 150 bars.' It thus appears, that the ideal standard of the blacks is, in re'ality, an ascertained quantity of a particular commodity, the value of which they compare with that of all other commodities; nor should we have thought of going further into the subject, had this notion of an ideal standard been peculiar to the author before us. But, as it has haunted the brains of all speculators on money from the time of Law downwards, we think it may be worth while to investigate somewhat more carefully the origin of so strange an illusion. The fallacy which, in this case, seems to be the source of misapprehension, apprehension, is curious, and of a species hitherto but little explained; a fallacy not arising from the double meaning of a word, but from an ambiguity, if such it may be called, between a name, and the thing which it signifies. There are two operations which we perform with money,-and confusion has arisen from losing. sight of the difference between them. First, we go to market with money. Secondly, we account by means of it. In regard to the first operation, money, they tell us, is an abstract term, or an abstract idea.-But let them go to market with an abstract term, or an abstract idea. Will they find any body ready to sell them what they want to purchase, for these airy commodities? No, says Mr Smith; we go not to market with these commodities, but with symbols or tokens which are the representatives of these commodities. Worse and worse: An abstract idea is good for nothing in purchasing; but its representative, which one would wonder should be more valuable than the thing represented, is all-powerful! But what does this representative pass for? Is it valued solely because it represents an abstract idea? Or, when you go to market with a guinea, does it not purchase in proportion to the value of the metal in the guinea? If so, you purchase not with an abstract idea, but with a real commodity. If you go to market with a bank note, which is an obligation to receive a known quantity of gold and silver; this is the same thing, in reality, as going to market with gold and silver. Abstract ideas, or ideal standards, therefore, are of no use in going to market. Men always go to market with real commodities; and they are able to purchase only as far as the value of those commodities extends. Next, we account by means of money. Now, what is the operation of accounting? We first state, in denominations of money, the value of any article, or accumulation of articles; and this statement we can manage in various ways. We can add it to another similar statement, to see how much they make in conjunction; or we can subtract it, to see how much they differ. We can multiply it; we can divide it; and discover various relations which it bears to other statements. In all these operations, the terms, pounds, shillings, and pence, exactly resemble algebraic symbols; and the letters x, y, and z might be employed for them. Operations of account, therefore, are undoubtedly carried on by abstract terms or symbols; and it is impossible that it should be otherwise. These operations, accordingly, predominating in the mind when men think of money, have led some ingenious inquirers to regard all money operations in the same light; and will incline most people, till they examine the matter, to think that there is more subtlety in the illusion of the ideal standard than there really is. For, what is it it that gives to these operations of account a meaning or a use? It is the ultimate reference of the symbols to real objects. We might add and subtract, multiply and divide, pounds, shillings, and pence, to all eternity, without an idea, but of certain relations of number, if we did not set out with affixing an object to the terms, if we did not conceive an individual something, of which the term pound, for example, is-not the representative-but the name. Now the term pound is, undoubtedly, the unambiguous name of a certain quantity of coined gold or silver. When a man has determined that the value of a certain article, or certain articles of property, is any multiple of this value, he sets them down as worth so many pounds, and, after that, proceeds no doubt to perform all his operations of account with abstract terms merely. But does this render the abstract term the measure, or the standard, or the money ? Surely not. If this were the case, the name would be the primary object, and the thing signified only the symbol of its own name: a most singular and incredible inversion, when terms are on all occasions the symbols of things! Suppose it were not customary to keep our accounts in denominations of money, but in denominations of corn,-which would certainly be the case, if it were as convenient to make our purchases with corn as with money; then we should state the value of our property, not by naming so many pounds, shillings, and pence, but so many quarters, bushels, and gallons. After this, however, was done, all operations of account would be performed exactly on the same principles as before. But would this render the term quarter our ideal standard? Would not the simple fact be, that a quarter of corn would in this case be, not the ideal, but the real value, assumed as a known quantity,-and with its multiples or divisors made use of, to denote or express other estimated values? Such of our readers as are conversant with the philosophi ̇cal doctrine of abstract terms, would do well to consider what it is that the word value really stands for. Is there any abstract idea of which it is the representative; and which abstract idea, or some modification of it, becomes our standard of valuation ? It is deinonstrated, that there can be no such thing as an abstract idea; and, if any one is unacquainted with the demonstration, let him read the elegant and philosophical reasonings of Mr Stewart in his chapter on Abstraction, in the Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind; and the original and important illustrations on the formation of abstract terms, in the second volume of Mr Horne Tooke's Diversions of Purley. As every existence is an individual, so, every conception in the mind must be of an indiyidual; and nothing is general but language. Thus, speech is a general general or abstract term; but, is there any abstract idea corresponding to it? No such thing. It is the past participle of an old Anglo-Saxon verb, signifying to speak; and means something spoken. An act, in like manner, is the past participle of a Latin verb, signifying to act; and means something acted, aliquid act-um. And what, in the next place, is value? It is the past participle of a French verb, signifying to be valued; and means something valued; something on which a value is set. But, if there can be no conception of value, distinct from the conception of something valued, it is this something which, in all possible cases, must be the instrument of valuation, or rather of expressing the degrees of value. The result then is, that an actual commodity of a known value, is this instrument; and that an ideal standard is a thing inconceivable. It would be whimsical, if a philosopher, who has been one of the most successful in proving the non-existence of general ideas, should be found to have been a patron of the ideal standard. Yet this notion has been imputed to Bishop Berkeley, who, in a tract of his, entitled the Querist, talks of money as merely a token or counter. But those expressions, when explained by the context, mean something very different, and we are persuaded that Berkeley was by far too close a thinker, and pursued the consequences of his ideas with too clear an eye, to admit, upon reflection, a notion so evidently at variance with one of his fundamental doctrines. * Those who are ena moured * When the expressions of Berkeley are considered, with reference to his object, we conceive that they cannot be regarded as in the least degree implying a fixed opinion respecting a standard of valuation; they are merely illustrations directed to a very different end. It was the great object of the Querist, and of most of the other political tracts of its admirable author, to persuade the people of Ireland that they had vast internal resources of which they might avail themselves by their own exertions; and that sloth was the great evil with which they had to contend. But, to attain his end, he had to surmount huge prejudices. The restrictions under which Ireland was then placed, in regard to foreign trade, was the universal subject of complaint; the advantages of foreign trade were exaggerat ed. According to the theory which then prevailed, foreign trade was reckoned the only means of bringing money into the country: money was, par excellence, riches. Without money, no circulation; and without circulation, no industry: therefore, Ireland could not be otherwise than slothful. This is clearly the train of reasoning which it is the object of the Querist to oppose and it completely explains the brief expressions which he uses concerning money. He was anxious to persuade his countrymen, that money was not riches; and moured of the ideal standard of value are wrong to confine themselves to that sole particular. The idea is equally applicable to various other cases. The term weight, for example, is one of exactly the same class with the term value; and as much in want of a fixed standard. We have denominations of weight, too, in the terms pounds, ounces, and grains, as we have of value in the terms, pounds, shillings, and pence; and we account by means of the former, in the same way as by means of the latter. It may be asserted, with the very same reason, that the pound, when it means weight, denotes an ideal standard of weight, as it can that the pound, when it means value, denotes an ideal standard of value. If it be said that we weigh with a real pound, is it not equally true that we go to market with a real guinea? If it be said that we put the pound weight at one end of a balance, and the commodity with which we compare it, at the other, and thus ascertain its weight; this is true;-and we ask, what is the import? Nothing more than this, that you have a mechanical process by which you compare one weight with another; but that, in comparing one value with another, you have no mechanical process, and the comparison is merely mental. That the one comparison, however, is mental, and the other mechanical, in no degree changes the nature of the operations. Nothing, in deed, and that, if they could not get money, they could do without it. He endeavours earnestly to impress the notion, that riches consist in valuable commodities; and that money is only useful to facilitate the exchange of these commodities for one another. He therefore calls it a token,-a counter; but it is evident that these are merely used as words of illustration, to signify that money serves the purpose of making exchanges; and that, if exchanges could be made without it, money might be dispensed with. He never once alludes to a standard of value; and if any one will examine what meaning can be attached to the terms token and counter, in this case, he will find how the idea or theory vanishes away. Money, he says, is a token;-but a token of what? A token, certainly, of a value of a particular amount. It is a value, therefore, of a particular amount, which is your standard of value; and of this particular value you can form no conception, but by applying it to a particular commodity: The commodity to which, from habit and convenience, we always apply it, is coined gold and silver. What, again, is a counter? Why, it is something with which to count. Money, then, is something with which to account. This can have no meaning, but that the denominations of money are useful with which to express the value of commodities. But how does it express the value of commodities? Simply, by naming a certain quantity of coined gold and silver. |