All the night afterwards, he would be semi-conscious of
an intangible bliss diffused through the fitful lapses of an old man's
slumber, and would awake, at early dawn, with a faint thrilling of the
heart-strings, as if there had been music just now wandering over them.

CURRENCY.

It is not only for gold that men labor, fight, and die. One labors long
to perfect an invention; another, to illustrate a theory; a third, to
express a sentiment; a fourth, to acquire real estate. With success, the
first has a machine; the second, a treatise; the third, a poem; the
fourth, a deed. Perhaps no other four persons would willingly expend the
same amount of labor on the same objects; yet this difference of
estimate effects no difference in the objects. Estimation, therefore, or
value, is not a quality of those objects, but a state of mind in
relation to them; accordingly, the poem has value as well as the
machine,--the deed, as well as the wealth it defines. The value of the
deed is, however, widely different from that of the wealth. The value of
the wealth is based on desire, that of the deed on right, though in
neither case exclusively, as, in a general sense, value always involves
both desire and right, and is, therefore, a commercial relation,
resulting from a state of society.

Men have the sense of right, and the intellect to define it, the will to
defend, and the power to enforce it; and, for the more perfect
development of these capabilities, they have instituted government. The
functions of government are, therefore, the definition, the defence, and
the enforcement of right.

The exercise of the function of definition led to the invention of two
classes of commercial instrumentalities,--the real, consisting of
weights and measures, and the ideal or representative, consisting of
writing and notation. The exercise of the remaining functions of
government secures the wealth these serve to define. It may, indeed, be
true, in a rude sense, that possession is nine points of the law; but it
is equally true, in a proper sense, that the remaining point is worth
more than the nine; the defence and enforcement of right being an
absolute and well-defined rule of government. In a state of barbarism
men prefer fact to right, for an obvious reason; but as they advance in
science and civilization, as their conceptions become more distinct,
their definitions more exact, their defences more complete, and their
enforcements more