22.7. 7. How the Price of Things is fixed in the Variation of the Sign of
Riches.
Money is the price of merchandise or manufactures. But how shall
we fix this price? or, in other words, by what piece of money is
everything to be represented?
If we compare the mass of gold and silver in the whole world with
the quantity of merchandise therein contained, it is certain that every
commodity or merchandise in particular may be compared to a certain
portion of the entire mass of gold and silver. As the total of the one
is to the total of the other, so part of the one will be to part of the
other. Let us suppose that there is only one commodity or merchandise in
the world, or only one to be purchased, and that this is divisible like
money; a part of this merchandise will answer to a part of the mass of
gold and silver; the half of the total of the one to the half of the
total of the other; the tenth, the hundredth, the thousandth part of the
one, to the tenth, the hundredth, the thousandth part of the other. But
as that which constitutes property among mankind is not all at once in
trade, and as the metals or money which are the sign of property are not
all in trade at the same time, the price is fixed in the compound ratio
of the total of things with the total of signs, and that of the total of
things in trade with the total of signs in trade also; and as the things
which are not in trade to-day may be in trade to-morrow, and the signs
not now in trade may enter into trade at the same time, the
establishment of the price of things fundamentally depends on the
proportion of the total of things to the total of signs.
Thus the prince or the magistrate can no more ascertain the value of
merchandise than he can establish by a decree that the relation 1 has to
10 is equal to that of 1 to 20. Julian's lowering the price of
provisions at Antioch was the cause of a most terrible famine.
[11]
Footnotes
[11]
Socrates, "History of the Church," lib. ii, 17.
