a franc should be different in weight and value from a shilling, and a
zwanziger vary from both, is wanton loss of commercial power.

72. (2.) It gives claim to the return of equivalent wealth at any
_Time_. In this second use, currency is the exponent of accumulation: it
renders the laying-up of store at the command of individuals unlimitedly
possible;--whereas, but for its intervention, all gathering would be
confined within certain limits by the bulk of property, or by its decay,
or the difficulty of its guardianship. "I will pull down my barns and
build greater," cannot be a daily saying; and all material investment is
enlargement of care. The national currency transfers the guardianship of
the store to many; and preserves to the original producer the right of
re-entering on its possession at any future period.

73. (3.) It gives claim (practical, though not legal) to the return of
equivalent wealth in any _Kind_. It is a transferable right, not merely
to this or that, but to anything; and its power in this function is
proportioned to the range of choice. If you give a child an apple or a
toy, you give him a determinate pleasure, but if you give him a penny,
an indeterminate one, proportioned to the range of selection offered by
the shops in the village. The power of the world's currency is similarly
in proportion to the openness of the world's fair, and, commonly,
enhanced by the brilliancy of external aspect, rather than solidity of
its wares.

74. We have said that the currency consists of orders for equivalent
goods. If equivalent, their quality must be guaranteed. The kinds of
goods chosen for specific claim must, therefore, be capable of test,
while, also, that a store may be kept in hand to meet the call of the
currency, smallness of bulk, with great relative value, is desirable;
and indestructibility, over at least a certain period, essential.

Such indestructibility, and facility of being tested, are united in
gold; its intrinsic value is great, and its imaginary value greater; so
that, partly through indolence, partly through necessity and want of
organization, most nations have agreed to take gold for the only basis
of their currencies;--with this grave disadvantage, that its portability
enabling the metal to become an active part of the medium of exchange,
the stream of the currency itself becomes opaque with gold--half
currency and half commodity, in unison of functions which partly
neutralize, partl