CH. I

THE CLASSIFICATION OF MONEY

13

But this was not the beginning. Earlier standardsexisted. And in the primitive age, before man hadattained to the conception of weight or to the tech-nical contrivance of the scales, when he had todepend for measurement upon counting barley-cornsor carats or cowries, it may still have been the Stateor the Community which determined what kindor quality of unit should be a due discharge of anobligation to pay which had been expressed by thenumerals one or two or ten—as when, so late as thethirteenth century, the English Government defineda penny sterling to be the weight of “32 wheat cornsin the midst of the ear A District Commissionerin Uganda to-day, where goats are the customarynative standard, tells me that it is a part of hisofficial duties to decide, in cases of dispute, whethera given goat is or is not too old or too scraggy toconstitute a standard goat for the purposes of dis-charging a debt.

Money, like certain other essential elements incivilisation, is a far more ancient institution than wewere taught to believe some few years ago. Itsorigins are lost in the mists when the ice was melting,and may well stretch back into the paradisaic intervalsin human history of the interglacial periods, when theweather was delightful and the mind free to be fertileof new ideas—in the Islands of the Hesperides orAtlantis or some Eden of Central Asia.

The Solonic Reform of the Athenian currency inthe sixth century b.c. was an exercise of the chartalistprerogative which was contemporary with, but in noway dependent upon, the existence of coined money.It was just a change of standard. Nor am I awareof any chartalist change of standard, expressly de-signed to benefit the State at the expense of thepublic, earlier than the second Punic War — Romebeing the first original to add this instrument to thearmoury of statecraft. From that time on chartalist