The Natural Law of Money

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Putnam, 1894 - 168 pages

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Page 47 - It being the established policy of the United States to maintain the two metals on a parity with each other upon the present legal ratio, or such ratio as may be provided by law.
Page 86 - Money money, and not because the money was paper ; but as this distinction never became clear to the popular mind, paper-money circulated under a cloud of distrust even during those times when it rested solely upon its intrinsic merits. Thus it was that the growth and improvement of colonial paper-money was stifled by the king's mandate. In comparing the colonial paper-money movement with our silver movement, we find a marked similarity as well in the popularity of the two movements as in the character...
Page 87 - Common consent has consigned it to rest with that kind of regard, which the long service of inanimate things insensibly obtains from mankind. Every stone in the bridge, that has carried us over, seems to have a claim upon our esteem. But this was a corner-stone, and its usefulness cannot be forgotten.
Page 135 - The laws of a country ought to be the standard of equity, and calculated to impress on the minds of the people the moral as well as the legal obligations of reciprocal justice. But tender laws, of any kind, operate to destroy morality, and to dissolve, by the pretence of law, what ought to be the principle of law to support, reciprocal justice between man and man...
Page 105 - States is estimated at sixty-seven millions. so much productive capital abstracted from industry and converted into dead capital, for no one can doubt our ability to maintain as large a proportion of creditmoney as Canada, if we will but adopt the proper legislative measures.
Page 35 - Clearly there is no need of making coin a legal tender at any specified weight. If governments would confine their legislation to fixing by enactment the fineness of the precious metal and the number of grains that shall constitute each piece of a given name, they may safely leave the maintenance of coinage. . .and the value of the pieces to be regulated [to] individual interest and action
Page 135 - ... obligation of political justice. But tender-laws of any kind operate to destroy morality and to dissolve by the pretence of law what ought to be the principle of law to support — reciprocal justice between man and man." ' There is no more use for a special law to compel the receiving of money than there is for one to compel the receiving of wheat or of cotton. The common law is as adequate for the enforcement of contracts in the one case as in the other...
Page 124 - The mere announcement of our intention to put our money on a sound metallic basis had brought capital to us in such abundance that the resumption was not only made easy, but the normal rate of interest was reduced, . . . This remarkable reduction ... is explainable only on the ground of a large influx of foreign capital.
Page 49 - the two metals on a parity with each other," and in another authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to pay in eiffier metal at Ins ''discretion.
Page 15 - One commodity employed as money does not go out of use until it is superseded by another of superior qualifications for the service. This is the natural law that governs the change from one kind of money to another. To give to coin all the elements of efficiency that it can possess, it is really only necessary to start it into circulation with its full weight and fineness of precious metal, that is, intrinsic equivalency, and its mintage or assay stamp, and let it go where it will. For examples,...

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