cience.

79. And indeed, it is only through evil conduct, wilfully persisted in,
that there is any embarrassment, either in the theory or working of
currency. No exchequer is ever embarrassed, nor is any financial
question difficult of solution, when people keep their practice honest,
and their heads cool. But when governments lose all office of pilotage,
protection, or scrutiny; and live only in magnificence of authorized
larceny, and polished mendacity; or when the people, choosing
Speculation (the s usually redundant in the spelling) instead of Toil,
visit no dishonesty with chastisement, that each may with impunity take
his dishonest turn;--there are no tricks of financial terminology that
will save them; all signature and mintage do but magnify the ruin they
retard; and even the riches that remain, stagnant or current, change
only from the slime of Avernus to the sand of Phlegethon--_quick_sand at
the embouchure;--land fluently recommended by recent auctioneers as
"eligible for building leases."

80. Finally, then, the power of true currency is fourfold.

(1.) Credit power. Its worth in exchange, dependent on public opinion of
the stability and honesty of the issuer.

(2.) Real worth. Supposing the gold, or whatever else the currency
expressly promises, to be required from the issuer, for all his notes;
and that the call cannot be met in full. Then the actual worth of the
document would be, and its actual worth at any moment is, therefore to
be defined as, what the division of the assets of the issuer would
produce for it.

(3.) The exchange power, of its base. Granting that we can get five
pounds in gold for our note, it remains a question how much of other
things we can get for five pounds in gold. The more of other things
exist, and the less gold, the greater this power.

(4.) The power over labour, exercised by the given quantity of the base,
or of the things to be got for it. The question in this case is, how
much work, and (question of questions!) _whose_ work, is to be had for
the food which five pounds will buy. This depends on the number of the
population, on their gifts, and on their dispositions, with which, down
to their slightest humours, and up to their strongest impulses, the
power of the currency varies.

81. Such being the main conditions of national currency, we proceed to
examine those of the total currency, under the broad definition,
"transferable acknowledgment of debt;"[40] among the