on a par in their effect on prices.
§ 6. What is essential to the idea of Money?
There has been a great amount of discussion and argument on the question whether several of these forms of credit, and in particular whether bank-notes, ought to be considered as money. It seems to be an essential part of the idea of money that it be legal tender. An inconvertible paper which is legal tender is universally admitted to be money; in the French language the phrase papier-monnaie actually means inconvertibility, convertible notes being merely billets à porteur. An instrument which would be deprived of all value by the insolvency of a corporation can not be money in any sense in which money is opposed to credit. It either is not money, or it is money and credit too.
Chapter X. Of An Inconvertible Paper Currency.
§ 1. What determines the value of an inconvertible paper money?
After experience had shown that pieces of paper, of no intrinsic value, by merely bearing upon them the written profession of being equivalent to a certain number of francs, dollars, or pounds, could be made to