be not in Truth, Tickets or Tokens for conveying and recording such Power, and whether it be of great consequence what Materials the Tickets are made of?”51 Here we find a confusion, first of the measure of value and the standard of price, and secondly of gold and silver as measures on the one hand and mediums of circulation on the other. Because precious metals can be replaced by tokens in the process of circulation Berkeley comes to the conclusion that these tokens represent nothing, i. e., only the abstract idea of
SIR JAMES STEUART had so fully developed the theory of the ideal unit of measure of money, that his successors—unconscious successors since they do not know him—have added to it neither a new version nor even a new example. “Money, which I call of account, is no more than an arbitrary scale of equal parts, invented for measuring the respective value of things vendible. Money of account, therefore, is quite a different thing from money coin, which is price52 and might exist, although there was no such thing in the world as any substance which could become an adequate and proportional equivalent, for every commodity.... Money of account ... performs the same office with regard to the value of things, that degrees, minutes, seconds, etc., do with regard to angles, or as scales do to geographical maps, or to plans of any kind. In all these inventions, there is constantly some denomination taken for the unit. ... The usefulness of all those inventions being solely confined to the marking of proportion. Just so the unit in money can have no invariable determinate proportion to any part of value, that is to say, it cannot be fixed to any particular quantity of gold, silver, or any other commodity whatsoever. The unit once fixed, we can, by multiplying it, ascend to the greatest value.... The value of commodities, therefore, depending upon a general combination of circumstances relative to themselves and to the fancies of men, their value ought to be considered as changing only with respect to one another; consequently, anything which troubles or perplexes the ascertaining those changes of proportion by the means of a general, determinate and invariable scale, must be hurtful to trade.... Money ... is an