not only not perishable, but are esteemed for Wealth at all times and everywhere; whereas other Commodities which are perishable, or whose value depends upon the Fashion; or which are contingently scarce and plentiful, are Wealth, but pro hic et nunc.”93 The withdrawal of money from the stream of circulation and the saving of it from the social interchange of matter reaches its extreme form in the burying of money, so that social wealth is brought as an underground indestructible treasure into a perfectly secret private relation with the owner of commodities. Dr. Bernier, who stayed for some time at the court of Aurenzeb at Delhi, tells us how the merchants, especially the Mohammedan heathens, who control nearly all the trade and all money, secretly bury their money deep in the ground, “being imbued with the faith that the gold and silver which they put away during their lives will serve them after death in the next world.”94 However, in so far as the asceticism of the hoarder is combined with active industry, he is rather a Protestant by religion and still more a Puritan. “It can not be denied that buying and selling are necessary, that one can not get along without them, and that one can buy like a Christian especially things that serve in need and in honor; for the patriarchs had also bought and sold cattle, wool, grain, butter, milk and other goods. They are gifts of God which He gives out of the earth and divides among men. But foreign trade which brings over from Calcutta, India and other such places commodities consisting of costly silks, and gold ware, and spices which only serve for luxury and are of no use, draining the land and the people of their money, should not be tolerated if we but had a government of princes. Yet I do not wish to write of that now, for I believe it will have to stop of itself, when we have no money any longer; and so will luxury and gluttony; for no writing or teaching will help until want and poverty will force us.”95
In times of disturbance in the process of the social interchange of matter, the burying of money takes place even in bourgeois societies which are at