Appleton's Cyclopedia, defining money, says:
Anything which freely circulates from hand to hand, as a common acceptable medium of exchange in any country, is in such country money, even though it ceases to be such, or to possess any value in passing into another country. In a word, an article is determined to be money by reason of the performance by it of certain functions, without regard to its form or substance.
BASTIAT'S DESCRIPTION OF THE CROWN PIECE.
Bastiat, in his "Harmonies Economiques," describing money, used the following illustration:
You have a crown piece. What does it mean in your hands? If you can read with the eye of the mind the inscription it bears, you can distinctly see these words: Pay to the bearer a service equivalent to that which he has rendered to society. Value received and stated, proved and measured by that which in on me.
No words could more correctly describe the unit in a properly regulated system of money. And notwithstanding the attempt to discredit silver coinage, no piece of money, as I have already shown, would better answer, by its steadiness of value, this description of Bastiat's than would the American silver dollar if silver were remonetized.
So far as it applied to gold Bastiat's description was much nearer accuracy in his day than it is in ours. In his life-time the mints of France and of the Continent were open for the coinage of silver equally with gold, and the money supply of the world was not constantly narrowing by being limited to the yield of a single metal whose annual output would hardly more than meet the demand for the arts.
Were Bastiat alive at this time he would reform his description so as to make it read as follows: "You have an American gold piece. You have had it hoarded in a bank vault for fifteen years. What does it mean in your hands? If you can read with the eye of the mind the inscription it bears, you can distinctly see these words: 'Pay to the bearer 50 per cent. more service than he has rendered to society; value not received or stated on me, but resulting from a cunning manipulation of the law of legal tender, through the influence of the holders of gold and of obligations payable therein, and as a reward to the bearer for having had this money hid away and for depriving society of its use for seventeen years.'"
When people are found everywhere working for money and not for the things which they really need, it is clear that they are working for money, not because of the material of which it is composed, but because it is an order for property which they can at any time obtain by parting with the money. To modify and elaborate Bastiat's description of the crown piece, it might be said of the Money Unit of the United States under a properly regulated system: