it by exchequer and treasury drafts,
credit, in short, in a thousand ways, enters into trade, filling up all
its channels, turning all its wheels, freighting all its ships, coming
down from the past, pervading the present, hovering over the future,
reaching every nook and affecting every man and woman in the civilized
world.

Such is the extent of credit; but let it be remarked in connection,
that, in all these innumerable and multifarious forms of it, in all the
stupendous interchanges of Mine and Thine, the ultimate reference is to
one sole standard of value, which is the value of the precious metals.
The civilized world has adopted these as the universal solvent of
its vast masses of obligation. It is assumed that some standard is
indispensable; it is asserted to be the imperative duty of governments,
if they would not make their exactions of taxes arbitrary, unequal, and
oppressive,--if they would render the dealings of individuals mutual and
just,--if they would preserve the property and labor of their subjects
from the merciless caprices of the powerful, and keep society from
reverting to a more or less barbarous state,--to supply a fixed and
equable money-measure; and the majority of the governments have selected
gold and silver as the best. As seemingly less changeable in quantity
and value than anything else, as imperishable, as portable, as
divisible, as both convenient and safe, the precious metals challenge
superiority over every other product; and accordingly every contract
and every debt is resolvable into gold and silver. From this fact, the
reader will see at once the prodigious significance of those materials
in the economy of trade, and the prime necessity that they should be
not only uniform in value, but so equally distributed that they may be
easily attainable when needed. Every change in their value is a virtual
change in the value of the vast variety of obligations which are
measured and liquidated by them; and every apprehension of their
scarcity or disappearance, by whatever cause excited, is an apprehension
of embarrassment on the part of all those who have debts to pay or to
receive.

But it happens that this standard is not an accurate standard. It does
not _stand_, while other things alone move, but moves itself; its value
is changeable,--fluctuating from time to time according to the relation
of supply and demand, and from place to place according to the
perturbations of the trade of the