West Coast of Africa; viz., Bathurst, Sierra Leone, Cape Coast East Coast of Africa; viz., Mozambique and Sofala, Madagascar, PART I. MONEY. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. MONEY or "the currency" is the standard measure of the value of commodities and the medium of exchanging them one for another. It is called a measure of value because the price of everything bought and sold is measured by it. Anything which everybody consents to use as a medium of exchange, and a measure of value in buying and selling may be considered as money. The members of the same community in buying and selling among themselves may use as a medium of exchange and a standard of value anything in which they all have entire confidence. But the medium selected, whatever it may be, must possess all the constituents of value. It must be limited in supply, useful and transferable. If a thing selected to serve as money can be arbitrarily increased or diminished, the prices of all things bought and sold by it will rise with its increase and fall with its diminution in quantity. Prices are said to rise when more money is required to pay for a given quantity of any article, and to fall when a smaller amount of money pays for the same quantity. In different stages of civilization various articles have been used as money, such as elephants' teeth, furs, small white glossy shells called cowries, tobacco, silk, hides, iron rings, &c. But gold and silver-the precious metals, as they are called, are now used as money in almost all parts of the world. This preference has been given to them because they possess, in a high degree, the requisite conditions of a medium of exchange and a measure of the value; those namely of usefulness, limited supply, transferableness, portability, divisibility, and durability. In other words, the precious metals command universal confidence in their value, they are easily carried, and they cannot be arbi B tarily increased or diminished in quantity. In early ages gold and silver, usually in ingots, circulated by weight; and the denominations of money were the same as those of weight. But as commerce extended the inconvenience of weighing the gold and silver, and testing their purity, led to the introduction of coins. Coins are pieces of metal (gold, silver, and platinum and copper for coins of small value) impressed with a stamp as a guarantee of their purity and weight. Coins became the medium of exchange and the measure of value among the members of the same political community; but for transactions between different political communities bars or ignots of gold and silver, estimated by weight, are still occasionally used. Pure gold and silver are too soft to serve as media of exchange, and for that reason they are usually alloyed, that is, mixed with a small proportion of harder or less valuable metals. The quantity of alloy varies in different countries, and in all cases the standard of a coin, that is, its degree of purity or fineness, as well as its weight must be taken into account. The value of the alloy is always disregarded in estimating the worth of a coin. If In some countries one metal only is used in the coinage as a standard of value, that is, as a legal tender of payment without limitation. In other countries both gold and silver are used, their relative value being settled at a fixed rate. A double standard of value is objectionable, because gold and silver fluctuate in price like other marketable commodities. the price of one of them at any time is raised disproportionately above that of the other, the undervalued metal is immediately driven out of the circulation, and is exported because it will realise a higher price in other countries in proportion to the other metal. The phrase "moneys of account" means the denominations and divisions of money in which accounts are kept. The moneys of account may either be identical with the current coins, or may bear definite proportions to them. EXCHANGES. Exchange signifies the giving or receiving, in return for a sum of money in the currency of one country, an equivalent sum in the currency of another country. The term Exchange |