S41
Different articles have been able to serve & have served as ordinary money.
Many Nations have adopted as a common measure of value in their language and in their Commerce different substances more or less precious; there are even to-day certain Barbarous Peoples who employ a kind of little shell called Caurits. I remember to have seen at College apricot stones exchanged and passed as a kind of money among the Scholars, who made use of them to play at different games. I have already spoken of the reckoning by head of cattle. One finds traces of it in the Laws of the ancient German Nations who destroyed the Roman Empire. The early Romans, or at least the Latins their ancestors, also made use of it. It is said that the first coin struck in copper represented the value of a sheep, and bore the imprint of that animal, and that it is from this that the word pecunia has come, from pecus. This conjecture has a good deal of probability.
S42
The Metals, and especially gold and silver, are more fit for this purpose than any other substance; & why.
We have thus come to the introduction of the precious metals into Commerce. All the metals, as one after the other they have been discovered, have been admitted into the exchanges in proportion to their real utility. Their brilliancy has caused them to be sought for to serve as
