amine, in the same manner, all the different parts of his dress and household furniture, the coarse linen shirt which he wears next his skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed which he lies on, and all the different parts which compose it, the kitchen-grate at which he prepares his victuals, the coals which he makes use of for that purpose, dug from the bowels of the earth, and brought to him, perhaps by a long sea and a long land carriage, all the other utensils of his kitchen, all the furniture of his table, the knives and forks, the earthen or pewter plates upon which he serves up and divides his victuals, the different hands employed in preparing his bread and his beer, the glass window which lets in the heat and the light, and keeps out the wind and the rain, with all the knowledge and art requisite for preparing that beautiful and happy invention, without which these northern parts of the world could scarce have afforded a very comfortable habitation, together with the tools of all the different workmen employed in producing these different conveniences :-if we exa mine, I say, all these things, and consider what a varie ty of labour is employed about each of them, we shall be sensible, that, without the assistance and co-operation of many thousands, the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be provided, even according to what we very falsely imagine the easy and simple manner, in which he is commonly accommodated. Compared, indeed, with the more extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must, no doubt, appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of a European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages. Smith.

ORIGIN AND USE OF MONEY.

THE origin of money is easily explained. 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 of them, 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. In order to avoid the inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man, in every period of society, after the first 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 other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry. Many different commodities, it is probable, were successively both thought of and employed for this purpose. In the rude ages of society, cattle are said to have been the common instrument of commerce; and though they must have been a most inconvenient one, yet, in old times, we find things were frequently valued according to the number of cattle, which had been given in exchange for them. The armour of Diomede, says Homer, cost only nine oxen: but that of Glaucus cost an hundred oxen. Salt is said to be the common instrument of commerce and exchanges in Abyssinia; a species of shells in some parts of the coast of India; dried cod at Newfoundland; tobacco in Virginia; sugar in some of our West India colonies; hides, or dressed leather, in some other countries; and there is at this day (that is, in the year 1776, when Mr Smith wrote) a village in Scotland, where it is not uncommon, I am told, for a workman to carry nails, instead of money, to the baker's shop, or the

álehouse. In all countries, however, men seem at last to have been determined, by irresistible reasons, to give the preference, for this employment, to metals, above every other commodity. Metals can not only be kept with as little loss as any other commodity, scarce any thing being less perishable than they are; but they can likewise, without any loss, be divided into any number of parts, as by fusion those parts can easily be reunited again,-a quality which no other equally durable commodities possess; and which, more than any other quality, renders them fit to be the instruments of commerce and circulation. The man who wanted to buy salt, for example, and had nothing but cattle togive in exchange for it, must have been obliged to buy salt to the value of a whole ox, or a whole sheep at a time. He could seldom buy less than this, because what he was to give for it could seldom be divided without loss: and, if he had a mind to buy more, he must, for the same reasons, have been obliged to buy double or triple the quantity, the value, to-wit, of two or three oxen, or of two or three sheep. If, on the contrary, instead of sheep or oxen, he had metals to give in exchange for it, he could easily proportion the quantity of the metal to the precise quantity of the commodity, which he had immediate occasion for. Different metals have been made use of, by different nations, for this purpose. Iron was the common instrument of commerce among the ancient Spartans, copper among the ancient Romans, and gold and silver among all rich and commercial nations. Those metals seem originally to have been made use of, for this purpose, in rude bars without any stamp or coinage. Thus, we are told by Pliny, upon the authority of Timaeus, an ancient historian, that, till the time of Servius Tullius, the Romans had no coined money, but made use of unstamped bars of copper, to purchase whatever they had occasion for. These rude bars, therefore, performed at this time the function of money. The use of metals, in this rude state, was attended with two very considerable inconveniences; first, with the trouble of weighing, and secondly, with that of assaying them. In the precious metals, where a small difference in the quantity makes a great differ

ence in the value, even the business of weighing, with proper exactness, requires, at least, very accurate weights and scales. The weighing of gold, in particular, is an operation of some nicety. In the coarser metals, indeed, where a small error would be of little consequence, less accuracy would, no doubt, be necessary. Yet, we should find it extremely troublesome, if every time a poor man had occasion either to buy or sell a farthing's worth of goods, he was obliged to weigh the farthing. The operation of assaying is still more difficult, still more tedious; and, unless a part of the metal is fairly melted in the crucible with proper dissolvents, any conclusion, that can be drawn from it, is extremely uncertain. Before the institution of coined money, however, unless they went through this tedious and difficult operation, people must always have been liable to the grossest frauds and impositions: and, instead of a pound weight of pure silver, or pure copper, might receive, in exchange for their goods, an adulterated composition, of the coarsest and cheapest materials, which had, however, in their outward appearance, been made to resemble those metals. To prevent such abuses, to facilitate exchanges, and thereby to encourage all sorts of industry and commerce, it has been found necessary, in all countries that have made any considerable advances towards improvement, to affix a public stamp upon certain quantities of such particular metals, as were in those countries commonly made use of to purchase goods. Hence the origin of coined money, and of those public offices called mints, institutions exactly of the same nature with those of the managers and stamp-masters of woollen and linen cloth. All of them are equally meant to ascertain, by means of a public stamp, the quantity and uniform goodness of those different commodities, when brought to market. The first public stamps of this kind, that were affixed to the current metals, seem in many cases to have been intended to ascertain, what it was both most difficult and most important to ascertain, the goodness or fineness of the metal, and to have resembled the sterling mark, which is at present affixed to plate and bars of silver, or the Spanish mark, which is

pay

sometimes affixed to ingots of gold; which being struck only upon one side of the piece, and not covering the whole surface, ascertains the fineness, but not the weight of the metal. Abraham weighs to Ephron the four hundred shekels of silver, which he had agreed to pay for the field of Machpelah. They are said, however, to be the current money of the merchant, and yet are received by weight, and not by tale, in the same manner as ingots of gold and bars of silver are at present. The revenues of the ancient Saxon kings of England are said to have been paid, not in money, but in kind, that is, in victuals and provisions of all sorts. William the Conqueror introduced the custom of ing them in money. This money, however, was for a long time received at the Exchequer by weight, and not by tale. The inconveniency and difficulty of weighing those metals with exactness, gave occasion to the institution of coins, of which the stamp, covering entirely both sides of the piece, and sometimes the edges too, was supposed to ascertain, not only the fineness, but the weight of the metal. Such coins, therefore, were received by tale, as at present, without the trouble of weighing. The denominations of those coins seem originally to have expressed the. weight or quantity of metal contained in them. In the time of Servius Tullius, who first coined money at Rome, the Roman as, or pondo, contained a Roman pound of good copper. The English pound sterling, in the time of Edward I. contained a pound, Tower-weight, of silver of a known fineness. The Scots money pound contained, from the time of Alexander I. to that of Robert Bruce, a pound of silver of the same weight and fineness with the English pound sterling. English, French, and Scots pennies, too, contained all of them originally a real pennyweight of silver, the 20th part of an ounce, and the 240th part of a pound. The shilling, too, originally seems to have been the denomination of a weight. The English pound and penny contain at present about a third only of their original value, and the Scots pound and penny about a thirty-sixth.-It is in this manner 'that money has become, in all civilized countries, the universal instrument of commerce, by the intervention