oney; and also that the
value of money, that is, its purchasing power, is fixed and regulated
by the amount of money available for use. Why, then, should any part
of the money that possesses and discharges all the functions of money
be excluded? What peculiar property has money stamped on gold and
silver that it only can act on prices?

John Stuart Mill says:

After experience had shown that pieces of paper, of no intrinsic
value, by merely bearing upon them the written profession of
being equivalent to a certain number of francs, dollars, or
pounds, could be made to circulate as such, and to produce all
the benefit to the users which could have been produced by the
coins which they purported to represent, governments began to
think that it would be a happy device if they could appropriate
to themselves this benefit, free from the condition to which
individuals issuing such paper substitutes for money were
subject, of giving, when required, for the sign, the thing
signified. They determined to try whether they could not
emancipate themselves from this unpleasant obligation, and make a
piece of paper issued by them pass for a pound, by merely calling
it a pound and consenting to receive it in payment for taxes. And
such is the influence of almost all established governments, that
they have generally succeeded in attaining this object: _I
believe I may say they have always succeeded for a time, and the
power has only been lost to them after they had compromised it by
the most flagrant abuse._--"Political Economy," Book 3, Chap. 13.

Mill further says that such inconvertible paper money will act on
prices. And if inconvertible paper money will act on prices, why will
not convertible paper money, that is, paper money convertible into
coin on demand, also act on prices? Token money, especially if a legal
tender, and whether a legal tender or not, if accepted without
objection in the payment of debt, or if received in full payment for
commodities, discharges the money function, and is to all intents and
purposes money. It is not absolutely necessary that to make a thing
money it should be a legal tender in the payment of debt. Anything
which is commonly accepted in exchange for labor or property and in
payment of debt, whether so accepted by force of law (that is, its
legal tender property) or by common consent, is money. From 18