BABYLON AND PERSIA

lydia and ASIA MINOR. 21 514. Gold and silver, used in this manner with awell-defined unit-weight of standard value dividedinto corresponding fractional weightsevidentlyanswered the purpose of money in commercial tran.sactions.Can, then, those bars, ingots, and rings becalled " money" ? They might but for one thing:they are not zvarranted. Who is to assure the sellerwho receives them in payment, of the fulness of theweight and the purity of the metal? No one. Ac¬cordingly we see that Abraham weighs out the 400shekels which he pays for the field. After this man¬ner by. weighing were all payments made, andthe quality of the metal was tested by means of atouchstone. And it remained with the seller toaccept or reject the bars or rings, according as hethought the weight full or short, the quality pure orinferior. Now tue do not weigh the coins we payand receive, nor are we allowed to reject them. Wetake them on trust. Wc arc bound so to take them,because they are warranted of good weight andstandard purit\', by our governments, who, in tokenthereof, stamp each coin with a certain device andlegend which private persons are forbidden to use.Guarantee and trust this is the mutual contract be¬tween ruler and ruled which at once converts a meremerchandise into money or state currency.Therewas just this one step to take, and it seems strangethat the Phrenicians, those matchless traders, shouldhave missed it. Nor can we well account for the factthat so momentous an improvement should have beenmade in Lydia rather than anywhere else, except bythe large quantities of precious metals which this