“Their lords might, for once, have condescended to receive a lesson from them,” observed Taddeus. “The ladies used the more convenient media, in my opinion.”
“I think we might take the hint,” said Paul. “I question whether we shall not soon find ourselves in difficulties, not only as to the quantity but the quality of our money. Our skins get sadly worn by passing from hand to hand; and our neighbours will refuse to take them when the hair is all off, and they look like nothing better than bits of old leather.”
“Besides,” observed Taddeus, “there are no means of keeping those of the same denomination of equal value. One mouse’s skin may be as good as another, at first; but it depends on how much each circulates, and on what care is taken of both, whether they are equally fit to be made mittens of at the close of the season. There will be endless trouble whenever our neighbours begin to look sharp, choose which mouse’s skins they will take in exchange, and which not.”
“There is another danger,” responded Paul, “though a distant one. The seasons here do not affect all animals alike, and a winter that may freeze our poor little mice in their holes, may do no harm to the ounces or hares. Now, if it should happen that we could for a whole year get no mice, and double the number of hares, our whole commerce will become perplexed. No one will know whether he is rich or not, if the value of his money is totally changed; and little Clara may find that she can buy more with a single mouse’s skin than her father with the twenty hare-skins he will have been hoarding for years!”
“It is very difficult to devise a kind of money that is steady in its value,” replied Taddeus.[Taddeus.] “Metals will always prove the best, I should think.”
“Yes; because they may be divided into very small portions; and they are little subject to wear and tear; and they carry great value in small bulk, so as to be convenient in removal.”
“So far so good. All this is true of such chance bits as are dangling at your wife’s shoulders; bits found near our smelting-house, or in the beds of rivers. But to make them as useful as they may be made, they must be coined. Without this, they cannot be marked out into denominations, nor, if they could, would their value remain steady. We could only determine the denomination of jagged, misshapen pieces of silver like those by perpetual weighing; and there would be many gradations between the weights required. And the circumstance of a thief running away with a handful, or of some lucky person picking up a dozen pieces in a day, would change the value, both of each denomination, and of all together, in a way which can scarcely take place where the process of coining has to be gone through, before the metals can be used as money.”
Paul thought that beauty was a quality which should be taken into consideration in the choice of all things that man meant to possess himself of, from a wife to a pair of mittens. Now, he thought gold and silver by far the prettiest commodities that can pass for any length of time from hand to hand.
“Clara would give it against you there,” replied Taddeus. “She is a great admirer of bright feathers, and would think such bunches of them as the Indians use as pretty a kind of money as need be devised. She had a fine assortment of them in her little cabinet at home. She was wondering, the other day, poor child, whose hands they were in now, and saying how gaily they would dress up the screen that she is weaving, to stand between the door and the oven. She thinks our mouse-skins very soft and pretty, too, and would like of all things to have a snow-white hare for a favourite, that she might cherish its beautiful coat.”
“Look, look!” cried Paul, “there is a Persian duck among the reeds. If I can get it for Clara, she need not wish for a prettier bunch of feathers than it will make. Shall I use powder, or try my arrows? I give you warning that we shall have a terrible din if I fire, whether I hit my [missing lines][[missing lines]]