Page:The wealth of nations, volume 1.djvu/24

 still practiced among barbarous nations who exchange with one another the necessaries of life: giving and receiving wine, for example, in exchange for coin and the like.… But the various necessaries of life are not easily carried about, and hence men agreed to employ in their dealings with each other something which was intrinsically useful, and easily applicable to the purposes of life—for example, iron, silver, and the like. Of this the value was at first measured by size and weight; but in process of time a stamp was put upon it to save the trouble of weighing, and to mark the value.… Wealth is assumed by many to be only a quantity of coin.… Others maintain that coined money is a sham, a thing not natural, but conventional only, which would have no value or use for any of the purposes of daily life if another commodity were substituted by the users. Indeed, he who is rich in coin may often be in want of necessary food. And how can that be wealth of which a man may have a great abundance, and yet perish with hunger, like Midas in the fable, whose insatiable prayer turned everything that was set before him into gold."

In the same connection Aristotle considers the various ways of money-making, and incidentally refers to the abhorrence of the trade of money-lending, which was universal throughout the ancient world. "The most hated sort," he writes, "of money-making, and with reason, is usury."

Another passage, also from the "Politics," shows that the ancients looked upon slavery as no less a natural and permanent institution, than the modern middle-class econo-