Money and Banking

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Money is one of those terms which political economists have borrowed from popular speech and found ill-adapted to their purposes. In spite of numerous attempts to make a suitable definition, it still lacks the precision and definiteness of meaning which should characterize scientific terminology. Popular usage is tolerably consistent and clear, but fails to include under the term all the instrumentalities which belong together in any scientific treatment of the subject, and political economists are not agreed regarding the point to which the popular meaning of the term should be extended. Even if these difficulties were removed, however, one not easy to overcome would still remain. All are agreed that under the head money we must include both the standard of value and the medium of exchange, two instrumentalities which perform very different functions, and the distinction between which is apt to be minimized, if not entirely overlooked, when an attempt is made to include them under one definition.