Page:Pleasing art of money-catching (6).pdf/3



When commerce and traffic was first begun in the world, and men came to trade one with another, there was no use for money, nor need of it; for men bartered their goods in exchange with each other; and as in the infancy of the world, some were tillers of the ground and others were keepers of sheep; the one gave the other corn, and took of their sheep in exchange for it. And this sort of trading is now generally in use in our foreign plantations, to supply the want of money. But in process of time, as trading increased, so did luxury begin to abound; and as luxury abounded, so men's wants grew greater, which begat a necessity of some other way of commerce, and this was money, which is of such antiquity, that Josephus tells us, that Cain, (the son of Adam, and the first born of men) was very greedy in gathering money together, though of what metal that money was made, and whether it was coined or not he is silent.

Herodotus writeth that the first that coined