Book Description

Excerpt from Essays on Political Economy We must remark, also, that the constant appear ance of money in every exchange has overturned and misled all our ideas: men have ended in think ing that money was true riches, and that to multiply it was to multiply services and products. Hence the prohibitory system; hence paper money; hence the celebrated aphorisrn, What one gains the other loses 5 and all the errors which have ruined the earth, and embrued it with blood.* After much research it has been found, that in order to make the two services exchanged of equivalent value, and in order to render the exchange equitable, the best means was to allow it to be free. How ever plausible, at first sight, the intervention of the State might be, it was soon perceived that it is always Oppressive to one or other of the contracting parties. When we look into these subjects, we are always compelled to reason upon this maxim, that equal value results from liberty We have, in fact, no other means of knowing whether, at a given moment, two services are of the same value, but that of examining whether they can be readily and freely exchanged. Allow the State, which is the same thing as force, to interfere on one side or the other, and from that moment all the means of appreciation will be complicated and entangled, This error will be combated in a. Pamphlet, entitled Cursed Money. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.