Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/315

Rh it be fashioned like iron into various useful instruments? if not, why cannot people procure what, they want in the way of barter? — but where is money to be got? — if it be made, then every man ought to spend his time in making money; that when he has got plenty, he may be able afterwards to obtain whatever else he wants. In answer to the last observation, Mr. Mariner replied that the material of which money was made was very scarce and difficult to be got, and that only chiefs and great men could procure readily a large quantity of it; and this either by being inheritors of plantations or houses, which they allowed others to have, for paying them so much tribute in money every year; or by their public services; or by paying small sums of money for things when they were in plenty, and afterwards letting others have them for larger sums, when they were scarce: and as to the lower classes of people, they worked hard, and got paid by their employers in small quantities of money, as the reward of their labour: &c. That the king was the only person that was allowed to make (to coin) money, and that he put his mark upon all that he made, that it might be known to be true; that no person could readily procure the material of which it was made, without paying money for it and if contrary to the taboo of