that while there has been continuity of history and development there has been a change of needs and circumstance. The danger of arbitrage transactions to the mediæval legislator lay in the fact that they stripped the country, which suffered from them, Page xii not, or not merely, of a bullion reserve, but of her actual currency, and rendered even internal trade impossible. He accordingly tried to arrest the drain by threatening imprisonment and death.
To-day the safety and supply of the internal currency of the various states is provided for by a monometallic system or by note issue, while, conversely, trade in the precious metals has become free, and bullion flows automatically from land to land in accordance with the dictates of a now rightly-conceived theory of international trade. Just so far the monetary problem has changed—becoming a question of the evolution of a stable international exchange system. The theoretic pretensions of bimetallism have correspondingly widened, but on any ground, wide or narrow, the only material for the study, comprehension, and judgment of such pretensions lies in the actual experience of Europe during the past five centuries.
A few words of more particular explanation are necessary.
- To the student of money and monetary standards the perpetually recurring phenomena of reductions of the unit and standard weights and contents of coins will present no difficulty. Three causes underlay