Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/165

Rh for his check, and is again paid into the hands of the workman at the end of the succeeding week. Any deficiency in this supply of money is attended with considerable inconvenience to all parties. If it be only in the smaller coins, the first effect is a difficulty in procuring small change; then a disposition in the shop-keepers to refuse change unless a purchase to a certain amount be made; and, finally, a premium in money will be given for changing the larger denominations of coin.

Thus money itself varies in price, when measured by other money in larger masses: and this effect takes place whether the circulating medium is metallic or of paper. These effects have constantly occurred, and particularly during the late war; and, in order to relieve it, silver tokens for various sums were issued by the Bank of England.

The inconvenience and loss arising from a deficiency of small money fall with greatest weight on the classes whose means are least; for the wealthier buyers can readily procure credit for their small purchases, until their bill amounts to one of the larger coins.

(178.) As money, when kept in a drawer, produces nothing, few people, in any situation of life, will keep, either in coin or in notes, more than is immediately necessary for their use; when, therefore, there are no profitable modes of employing money, a superabundance of paper will return to the source from whence it issued, and an excess of coin will be converted into bullion and exported.

(179.) Since the worth of all property is measured by money, it is obviously conducive to the