MRS. B

HAVING obtained some knowledge of the nature of value, we may now proceed to examine the use of money.

Without this general medium of exchange, trade could never have made any considerable progress; for as the subdivisions of labour increased, insuperable difficulties would be experienced in the adjustment of accounts. The butcher perhaps would want bread, at a time that the baker did not want meat; or they might each be desirous of exchanging their respective commodities, but these might not be of equal value.

CAROLINE

It would be very difficult, I believe, at any time to make such reckonings exactly balance each other.

MRS. B

In order to avoid this inconvenience, it became necessary for every man to be provided with a commodity which would be willingly taken at all times in exchange for goods. Hence arose that useful representative of commodities, money, which, being exclusively appropriated to exchanges, every one was ready either to receive or to part with for that purpose.

CAROLINE

When the baker did not want meat he would take the butcher's money in exchange for his bread, because that money would enable him to obtain from others what he did want.

MRS. B

Various commodities have been employed to answer the purpose of money. Mr. Salt, in his Travels in Abyssinia, informs us, that wedges of salt are used in that country for small currency, coined money being extremely scarce. A wedge of rock-salt, weighing between two and three pounds, was estimated at 1-30th of a dollar.