Roscher, Wolowski, and Cossa.

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to have been read by Macleod, whose work was published two months after mine. He certainly had no intention of favoring joint-metallism. Indeed he claims that very little metallic money is required for use in the world's trade and commerce.

Macleod is the highest juridical authority on forms and uses of credit, and his very eminence in this department has led him, I think, to a dangerously exaggerated estimate of the position of credits as a basis for currency.

An economist of commanding ability, he is more juridical than judgmatical, a great philosophical writer of history, with a purpose, and more an advocate than a judge.

Macleod mentions, in a note, the edition of the treatises of Oresme and Copernicus published by Guillaumin et Cie., Paris, 1864. But he omits to mention the names of Roscher and Wolowski who had written so ably thirty years. before him, regarding those grand old economists. Nor does he mention what Cossa had written in the Introduction to the Study of Political Economy.1

1 See also Cunningham's Growth of English Industry and Commerce.

After noticing other economists of the XIVth century, Cossa wrote:

Last must be mentioned the most remarkable of them all, Nicholas Oresme, who died in 1932 as Bishop of Lisieux. He wrote his De origine, natura, jure et mutationibus monetarum for his pupil Charles V., and afterwards republished it in French. Here is a simple, well-arranged, and clear summary of the theory of money, together with a masterly arraignment of those who were for debasing coin. Roscher, like all the generations of specialists who had read this brief masterpiece, conceived a high opinion of its merits, and his commendation led Wolowski to prepare an admirable edition of it in Latin and French, which was printed in 1864."

Later on in the same work, after noticing a number of writers who had treated of coinage from different points of view, Cossa wrote:

"But none of the authors above mentioned compare in importance with those who dealt with the very same problems from a purely economic point of view.

Anticipates Gresham's Theorem. 161 Nicholas Copernicus, the astronomer, in or about the year 1526, upon the invitation of King Sigismund of Poland, wrote a pamphlet, De moneta cudendæ ratione, which was not published until 1816, and was reprinted and translated into French. in 1864 by Wolowski. Copernicus there explains clearly the functions of money, condemning all debasement, as well as the so-called right of dominion (seigneurage) He shows the harm underlying all these practices, while he justifies alloy and anticipates Gresham's theorem, strongly favouring also a concentration and simplification of the uttering of coins; and finally he makes a special application of all his views to the conditions actually existing in certain Prussian provinces then under Polish rule."

Macleod prints letters commending his legal ability, etc., from Lords Hatherley, Westbury, Selborne, Coleridge, Penzance, Ardmillan, and Manor, and Lords Chief Justice Bovill, Cockburn, etc., and no more stalwart advocate of gold monometallism could be selected. That Macleod's book

we agreed to recommend a joint standard of measurement consisting of half the length added to half the square root of the sail area, with some minor modifications; and I presided at the meeting of the club when this report was adopted, May 28, 1883.

The joint system of measurement is now generally approved, although when it was first talked of many thought it absurdly complicated.

It must be admitted that joint-metallism is more complicated than either monometallism or bimetallism. The natural course of development is from the simpler to the more complex. "Clocks are more complicated than hour-glasses." Civilization is more complicated than barbarism. Just legislation is more complicated than

"The good old rule, the simple plan,
That he should take who has the power,
And he should keep who can.”

Mr. Wells and Mr. Atkinson above all others have adequately studied and set forth the effects of the increased produc

Walter Bagehot.

145

tiveness of labor; but it seems to me they have not sufficiently considered and expounded the effects of the increased "preciousness imparted to gold" by monometallistic legislation.

Walter Bagehot, if living to-day, would be, I think, a joint-metallist. He wrote in February, 1877, shortly before he died :

"As yet no one can prove that the permanent value of silver, whether in its relation to gold or to commodities at large, will change so much as to render any alteration necessary.

Since 1877 silver has declined from $1.20 per ounce (the average for that year) to .63 per ounce, November, 1894, and the index number of gold prices of general commodities has declined, according to Sauerbeck's tables (45 leading commodities average per year), from 94 to 65 (to February 28, 1894); or, according to the London Economist's tables (22 leading articles January 1, 1877, to January 1, 1894), from 88 to 67.

Joint-metallism is strictly a merit sys

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