or Moneyer, a name which antiquaries and medallists give to those who struck the ancient coins or moneys. Many of the old Roman coins have the name of the monetarius, either written at length, or at least the initial letters of it. See the article Medals. Money is a term used to designate whatever commodity the inhabitants of any particular country, accept either voluntarily or by compulsion, as an equivalent for their labour, and for whatever else they have to dispose of.

Sect. I.—Circumstances which led to the use of money. Principal properties that every commodity used as such ought to possess. Not a sign or a measure of value, but a real equivalent.

A country in which the division of labour was unknown, and where every individual or family directly produced the commodities necessary for his or their consumption, would have no exchanges, and consequently no money. But, after the division of labour has been established, the introduction of money becomes necessary, or, at least, highly advantageous. A very small part only of a man's wants is then directly supplied by his own labour. The greater part is indirectly supplied by exchanging that part of the produce of his labour which exceeds his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men's labour as he has occasion for, and they are willing to part with. Every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society.

"But when the division of labour first began to take place, this power of exchanging must frequently have been very much clogged and embarrassed in its operations. One man we shall suppose, has more of a certain commodity than he himself has occasion for, while another has less. The former, consequently, would be glad to dispose of, and the latter to purchase, a part of this superfluity. But, if this latter should chance to have nothing that the former stands in need of, no exchange can be made between them. The butcher has more meat in his shop than he himself can consume, and the brewer and the baker would each be willing to purchase a part of it; but they have nothing to offer in exchange except the different productions of their respective trades, and the butcher is already provided with all the bread and beer which he has immediate occasion for. No exchange can, in this case, be made between them. He cannot be their merchant, nor they his customers; and they are all of them thus mutually less serviceable to one another. To avoid the inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man, in every period of society, after the establishment of the division of labour, must naturally have endeavoured to manage his affairs in such a manner as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commodity or another, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry." Money. (Wealth of Nations, vol. i. p.43. McCulloch's ed.)

This commodity, whatever it may be, is money.

An infinite variety of commodities have been used as Commodity-money in different countries and states of society. Those ties used as nations who chiefly subsist by the chase, such as the ancients in Russia, and the greater part of the Indians who now occupy the uncultivated portion of America, use the skins of wild animals as money. In a pastoral state of society cattle are most commonly used for that purpose. Homer tells us, that the armour of Diomed cost only nine oxen, whilst that of Glaucon cost one hundred. (Ilias, lib. 6, lin. 235.) The etymology of the Latin word pecunia, signifying money, and of all its derivatives, proves that cattle (pecus) had been the primitive money of the Romans. They had also been used as such by the ancient Germans; for their laws uniformly fix the amount of the penalties to be paid for particular offences in cattle. (Storch, in loco citato.) In remoter ages corn was very generally used, in agricultural countries, as money; and even now, it is by no means uncommon to stipulate for corn rents and wages. Other commodities have been used in different countries. Salt is said to be the common money of Abyssinia (Wealth of Nations, i. p. 45.); a species of shells, called cowries, gathered on the shores of the Maldivian Islands, are used in smaller payments throughout Hindustan, and form the only money of extensive districts in Africa. Dried fish forms the money of Iceland and Newfoundland; sugar of some of the West India islands; and Dr. Smith mentions that there was, at the period of the publication of the Wealth of Nations, a village in Scotland where it was customary for a workman to carry nails, as money, to the baker's shop or the alehouse. (Wealth of Nations, i. p. 45.)

But these commodities are universally deficient in some Defects of the principal requisites which every commodity used as money ought to possess. Products must frequently be brought to market worth only half an ox, or half a skin; but as an ox could not be divided, and as the division of a skin would most probably deprive it of the greater part of its value, it would be impossible to exchange them for such money. Divisibility is not, however, the only indispensable requisite in a commodity used as a medium of exchange. It is necessary that it should admit of being kept for an indefinite period without deteriorating; that it should, by possessing great value in small bulk, be easily transported; and that one piece of money, of a certain denomination, should always be precisely equivalent to every other piece of money of the same denomination. But none of the commodities above named as having been used as money possesses these properties. Though cattle had been sufficiently

1 Etymologists differ respecting the derivation of the word money. Some contend that it comes from monere, (quid nota inscripta de valore admodum,) because the stamp impressed on coined money indicates its weight and fineness (Boutroux, Recherches sur les Monnaies de France, p. 1.); and others, that it originates in the circumstance of silver being first coined at Rome in the temple of Juno Moneta. (Suidas, in voce Monera.)

2 Storch, Traité d'Economie Politique, tome iii. p. 16.; and Ullon, Memoires Philosophiques sur l'Amérique, tome ii. p. 100.

3 Morellet, Prospectus d'un Nouveau Dictionnaire de Commerce, p. 115.

4 "Dans les pays où le cuivre a trop de valeur pour pouvoir représenter celle des plus menues denrées, on est encore obligé de lui substituer quelque autre matière plus commune. C'est cette circonstance qui a fait adopter aux Indiens l'usage des cuivres en guise des petits monnaies. Cet usage pouvait paraître étrange dans les pays aussi riches et d'une civilisation aussi ancienne que le Borneo et l'Indonésie; mais le cuivre y est si rare, et les vivres y sont à si bon marché, qu'une pièce de la valeur de 1 cop. est à (about a halfpenny English) peut y acheter une quantité des denrées suffisante pour la subsistance journalière d'un homme du peuple. On est donc obligé de diviser la plus petite monnaie de cuivre en plusieurs fractions; et comme une monnaie d'aussi peu de valeur coûteur plus à fabriquer qu'elle ne peut valoir, on la remplace par un coquillage dont la nature fait presque tous les frais. Quelque mince que soit la valeur d'un cuivre, elle suffit dans ces contrées isolées pour acheter une pièce des bananes ou quelque autre fruit commun." (Le Goux de Flaux, Essai sur l'Indonésie, tom. i. pp. 143—200, quoted by Storch, Économie Politique, tom. iii. p. 133.)

5 Smith, ubi supra; and Horrebou, Description de l'Islande, tome ii. p. 90.