Political economy

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 867647221

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-93157

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Chapman, Sydney John http://d-nb.info/gnd/123743141

Title:: Political economy

Place of publication:: London [u.a.]

Publisher:: Williams & Norgate [u.a.]

Year of publication:: 1912

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (255 Seiten)

Collection:: Economics Books

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168 MODERN MONETARY SYSTEMS recognise the part played by the State in determining the value of the precious metals, the ideas which we have assigned to the legislators of the Year XI—that money is essentially a commodity and that public authorities cannot affect its rate—are still classical. Moreover, they have certain apparent advantages on their side. Thus, for instance, gold, which since 1873 has alone enjoyed the advantage of being almost universally admitted to free coinage, can move between one country and another, whatever stamp it may bear, without losing any of its value apart from the expenses of transport, insurance, etc. The stamp affixed by the State does not appear to play any considerable part in determining its value, as it preserves this stamp in foreign countries to which it is only admitted as bullion; hence it appears to be the “commercial” value of the bullion which is at the basis of the legal value of a coin. Moreover, it will be remembered that in instituting a system of free coinage under which the mints never compelled the metal to be handed over but were always ready to receive it in unlimited quantities and give it back in full in the form of coins, legislators had believed them- selves to be reducing to a minimum and practically eliminating their own intervention. It would indeed be a paradox if on the one occasion on which the public authorities had ceased to attempt regulating the rate of precious metals they had actually succeeded in doing so. Nevertheless, however plausible the theory may be that the value of a currency cannot be determined except like that of any ordinary commodity and independently of any State intervention, it must be admitted that this doctrine rests chiefly on the experience of a system which differs widely from that which is now in force and that the lessons of this experience may have been superficially learnt. Before the Revolution, the State, having bought on the rate of precious metals, for instance the stabilisation of the ratio between the value of two metals which continued for three-quarters of a century by French law, etc.” See also Cauwes, “Cours d’Economie Politique,” Vol. I, in particular, p. 50I, § 546 of the second edition, and Bourguin, “La mesure de la valeur et la monnaie, p. 192 et seq.

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