Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/801

 R.VIEWS 779 on price need not involve another man's loss. It is not clear by what system of exchange, without money and without price (if it be so conceived), Miss Potter intends the ideal distribution to be effected. If distribution is to be effected without exchange, we should need to understand clearly who are to be the distributors and in what way they are to proceed. From the few passages where this is touched at all we should gather that the ideal is the old one of Louis Blanc ' unto every one according to his wants.' The questions that arise at this point would take us beyond the region of Cooperation. JAMES BONAR Note Storiche sulla Questlone Giuridica dei Pa#amenti Monetarii. By C. A. CoIc;LI,sI. (Modena) 1891. WA? view should be taken of the terms of a money bargain when at the time of fulfihnent the value of the money concerned has under- gone a change ? Even t'he burning question of Usury did not excite more eager debate among medieval thinkers than this problem. It was nothing unusual for a monarch to lessen the amount of good metal and declare the value of the coin to be as before, or to leave the metal as it was and declare the value to be higher than before (p. 6). There were two leading views of the legal question. One class of theorists took their stand on ' the juridical form, the legal or extrinsic value' of the sum specified; they regarded money simply as the means of exchange, and abstracted from its metallic composition altogether. The value of the money was in their eyes determined by the will of the lawgiver expressed on the face of the coin. Another class of theorists took their stand on 'the economical essence,'' the metallic or intrinsic value' and saw in money nothing but a piece of coined metal, owing its function (of aiding exchange) purely to its metallic composition. In this latter view, the creditor should receive from the debtor not the same nominal sum as was specified in the bargain, but the same quantity of metal as ws at the time of the bargain contained in the coins therein specified. Neither Aristotle nor the Roman lawyers had decided the question, for it was not in their times an urgent one. The early commentators on the Roman law adopted the first or legal theory. But in divided Italy and Germany the evils of debased currency were soon felt to demand a theory that would give protection to the creditor; and, as the creditor was most frequently a landlord or a corporation, and the debtor a poor tenant or private consumer, the paths seemed smoothed for the metallic theory. Unfortunately, in these days before index numbers, the quantity of metal was the only criterion; and the desired adjustments were not in practice realizable (11). In England and in France, because of the early consolidation of the monarchy, the legal theory soon prevailed, though both countries had had a fair share of suffering from alterations of the currency (17 c.f. 34). A uniformity of coinage