Mankind, having covenanted to put an imaginary value upon gold and silver, by reason of their durableness scarcity, and not being very liable to be counterfeited, have made them, by general consent, the common pledges, whereby men are assured, in exchange for them, to receive equally valuable things to those they parted with, for any quantity of those metals; by which means it comes to pass that the intrinsic value regard in those metals, made the common barter, is nothing but the quantity which men give or receive of them; they having, as money, no other value but as pledges to procure what one wants or desires.
Baudeau, reputed one of the most eminent of an early school of French economists, says:
Coined money in circulation is nothing, as I have said elsewhere, but effective titles on the general mass of useful and agreeable enjoyment which cause the well-being and propagation of the human race.
It is a kind of a bill of exchange, or order payable at the will of the bearer.
Adam Smith says:
A guinea may be considered as a bill for a certain quantity of necessaries and conveniences upon all the tradesmen in the neighborhood.
Jevons's "Money and Exchanges," chapter 8, says:
Those who use coins in ordinary business need never inquire how much metal they contain. Probably not one person in two thousand in this kingdom knows, or need know, that a sovereign should contain 123.27447 grains of standard gold.
Money is made to go. People want coin, not to keep in their own pockets, but to pass it off into their neighbors' pockets.
Henry Thornton, in his work on Paper Credit, says: