The law of Oresme, Copernicus, and Gresham; a paper read before the American philosophical society, April 23, 1908

THE LAW

OF

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM

THE LAW

OF

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM

A PAPER READ BEFORE

THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

April 23, 1908

BY

THOMAS WILLING BALCH

Member of the Philadelphia Bar

The American Philosophical Society

The Council of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania

Reprinted from the Proceedings of The American Philosophical Society
Volume XLVII, 1908

PHILADELPHIA

ALLEN, LANE AND SCOTT

1908

OF 1

UNIVERSITY

OF

¥

,V

y

NOTE

In preparing this paper I have consulted the
original manuscripts of Oresme and Copernicus
edited by Wolowski and published by Guillau-
min in 1864, and also Burgon's life of Sir Thomas
Gresham printed in 1839.

T. W. B.

Philadelphia, May, 1908.

173079

THE LAW

op

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM.

By Thomas Willing Balch.

Among the most certain laws known to economic
science is the one that, when two moneys of
unequal value are placed in circulation at the
same time side by side as currency of the realm,
the poorer or cheaper will drive the better or
dearer from circulation. This law, though fought
over most strenuously in this country within
recent years, as if its immutable operation had
not been thoroughly demonstrated in past ages
of humanity, was known in part at least to the
Ancients. Of this there is ample proof in the
Frogs of Aristophanes. In that play, the fore-
most comic poet dramatist of Greece places in
the mouths of the chorus these lines: —

"Oftentimes have we reflected on a similar abuse
In the choice of men for office, and of coins for common use;
For your old and standard pieces, valued and approved and tried
Here among the Grecian nations, and in all the world beside,
Recognized in every realm for trusty stamp and pure assay,

2 THE LAW OP

Are rejected and abandoned for the trash of yesterday;
For vile, adulterate issue, drossy, counterfeit and base,
Which the traffic of the city passes current in their place."1

In the above quotation it is distinctly shown
that the better coins that had been current were
driven out and replaced by pieces of inferior
value. And as a poetic mind like that of Aristo-
phanes could hardly have understood, much less
have discovered such a subtle unwritten law of
money, had not some knowledge of it been the
common possession of the intellectuals of Greece
in the epoch in which he lived, we can infer from
Aristophanes 's statement of it, that the Grecian
States passed through the ups and downs of a
change in the standard of value caused by a
debasement of the currency.

The same state of affairs existed among the
Romans, and the amount of benefits and evils
that obtained in the reign of each Roman
Emperor can in a measure be judged by the
greater or less purity of the coinage issued in
their respective reigns.

1 Frere's translation.

In Bonn's Classical Library this passage is thus rendered: "The
freedom of the city has often appeared to us to be similarly circum-
stanced with regard to the good and honorable citizens as to the old
coin and the new gold. For neither do we employ these at all, which
are not adulterated, but the most excellent, as it appears, of all
coins, and alone correctly struck and proved by ringing everywhere,
both among the Greeks and the barbarians, but this vile copper
coin, struck but yesterday and latterly with the vilest stamp."

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM. 3

The experiences of the Ancient World with
money as the mechanism of exchange were
largely unknown to the peoples of the Middle
Ages, and they had to discover for themselves
at a great and bitter cost that any attempt to
debase the currency only results in the good
money disappearing from circulation to the ruin
of the commonwealth and of its inhabitants,
especially of the poorer members.

Three men, exercising three different callings,
but all three profound students, and two of
them ranking among the scholars of the world, in
three different, countries, in three distinct periods
of time, discovered independently of one another
and explained to their respective sovereigns that
when into the currency of a country a poorer
or cheaper money is injected by the side of a
better which is the standard of value, the certain
and immutable result will be that the currency
of the realm will be debased to the standard of
the poorer money. For as it will then be pos-
sible to pay debts in either money, people will
naturally pay them in the cheaper currency,
selling the better money by weight at the pre-
mium that it will command in the standard of
the poorer currency.

These three men were Nicole Oresme, Bishop of
Lisieux in Normandy, who stated this subtle un-
written law of money for Charles the Fifth of France,

4 THE LAW OP

surnamed the Wise; Nicolaus Copernicus of Thorn
in Prussia, the discoverer of the Copernican theory
of Astronomy, who expounded this same law of
the currency for Sigismund the First of Poland;
x and Sir Thomas Gresham, a noted English merchant,
who explained it to Elizabeth of England. It is
proper then that in honor of these three discoverers
of an economic truth that is a precious thing for
humanity to know, that this law should be called
the Law of Oresme, Copernicus and Gresham.

Oresme and Copernicus each prepared a learned
and comprehensive treatise for their respective
sovereigns on the practical functions and workings
of money, and Gresham wrote a letter to his Queen
in which he pointed out to her that good and bad
coin could not circulate together. No branch of
science arises all developed at one bound from the
brain of a single man as Minerva sprang all armed
from the head of Jove. It advances by successive
degrees, as one scholar after another, armed with
the knowledge acquired by his predecessors, devel-
ops further what the human race knows of the
laws of the universe. And as Hugo Grotius, who
assembled from all points of the compass the rules
and usages that Princes and cities observed in his
day in their relations one with another in his monu-
mental work, De Jure Belli ac Pacts, and gave
them a further advance in the trend of a humane
and civilized development, has justly been called

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM. 5

ever since the father of the science of International
Law, so Nicole Oresme and, a greater man than he,
Nicolaus Copernicus, for their pioneer work in the
exposition of the true rules that govern money as
the medium of commercial exchange, have just as
truly been described by MacLeod as the Castor and
Pollux of Monetary Science. They both delved
into the past experiences in the matter of money
of their respective countries, and probably made
use of much of what the Greek and the Roman
publicists had said on the subject. The work of
Grotius first redounded to the advantage of humanity
by the application of many of the humane principles
that he advocated by their practical adoption by
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in the terrible Thirty
Years War. The light shed by Oresme and Coper-
nicus on the functions of currency first helped to
lighten the burdens of humanity through their
application by Charles the Fifth of France and
Sigismund the First of Poland. And a generation
after the true expounder of our solar and planetary
system had prepared his treatise on money, Sir
Thomas Gresham likewise, through Elizabeth of
England, aided the human race to derive the advant-
ages that are conferred upon society by an honestly
maintained measure of value.

The importance of the economic work of Nicole
Oresme was first revealed to the world at large in
1862 by William Roscher, Professor of Political

6 THE LAW OF

Economy in the University of Leipzig. Oresme's
master work, Tractatus De Origine, Natura, Jure et
Mutationibns Monetarum, was often referred to be-
fore that time. But in every case before Roscher
saw Oresme's work in manuscript, the examiners of
Oresme's learned and lucid treatise failed to grasp
its real importance. When, however, it came under
the eye of Roscher, a trained economist, he saw at
once the profound significance of the work. Under
the title of "A Great French Economist of the
Fourteenth Century," Roscher called the attention
of the world to Oresme's treatise on money. Two
years later the French naturalized Pole, Louis
Wolowski, also signalized to his adopted country
the work of the fourteenth century economist.2

Nicole Oresme, who may be looked upon as the
first scholar, so far as we now know, to expound
comprehensively money as the mechanism of ex-
change, was by birth a Norman. He studied at
the University of Paris, where he was classed in
the Norman nation. At the University, Oresme
was reputed to be the most able and learned in his
knowledge of the sciences and the fine arts. He
translated at the request of Charles the Fifth the
Ethics, Politics, and other works of Aristotle. He

2 Traictie de la premiere invention des Monnoies de Nicole Oresme
textes francais et latin d'apres les manuscrits de la Bibliotheque
Imp^riale et Traite" de la Monnoie de Copernic, texte latin et traduc-
tion francaise publics et annot^s par M. L. Wolowski, membre de
l'lnstitut. Paris, Guillaumin et Cie., 1864.

J>*-*-> I"

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM. 7

delivered at Avignon on December the 24th, 1363,
before Pope Urban the Fifth and the members of the
sacred college a sermon in which he censured the
high clergy of France. Charles also commissioned
him to translate the Bible, in order that this ver-
nacular version might be opposed to that of the
Waldensians.

When Charles the Fifth succeeded to the throne
of his ancestors, the French, crushed by what was
for those times an enormous debt, were groaning
under the weight of the accumulated mismanage-
ment of previous rulers, and the " royaume des lys"
had shrunk to small proportions before the English
invasion, and was fast disappearing in misery and
anarchy. Owing to the capture of Charles's father,
King John, by the English, Charles was called
upon to act as regent. During those years he
learnt much which later as king he put to valuable
practical use. Reigning from 1364 to 1380 under
the title of Charles the Fifth, he was, for his able
management of the affairs of his kingdom, justly
surnamed the Wise. This honorary title, Charles
the Fifth, who was a capable and sagacious man,
was entitled for in great measure to the fact that
he surrounded himself and relied upon the services
of men of first rate ability who had strengthened
their natural capacities by hard work, such gen-
erals as the Breton, Bertrand du Guesclin, such
scholars as the Norman, Nicole Oresme. It was

8 THE LAW OP

Charles the Wise, too, who, in beginning the first
collection of manuscripts in the Louvre, that after-
wards became the Bibliotheque Royale, then the
Bibliotheque Imperiale, and to-day is known as the
Bibliotheque Nationale, was the founder of what
is to-day the largest depository of learning in the
world.

The chief cause of the unhappy state in which
the French people found themselves when Due
Charles became king in 1364 was in large measure
due to the tampering by their rulers with the
weight of the value of the coins of the realm.
Many of the French kings had thought to raise
revenue by forcing their people to accept a de-
based coinage. Of these royal false coiners, Dante
flays Philip the Fair (1285-1314) in the Paradiso
in these words:

"La si vedra il duol che sopra Senna
Induce, falseggiando la moneta."3

In addition to debasing the coinage, the French
Sovereigns again and again changed the mint
price of gold and silver. In the reign of King
John the Second, the value of the livre tournois
was changed between 1351 and 1360 no less than
seventy-one times.4 And what made the re-
sulting confusion from this unjustified and foolish

3 "There shall be seen the woe that he shall pour

Along the Seine by debasing the coinage."

4 Wolowski.

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM. 9

meddling with the measure of commerce still
worse, was that sometimes the value of the livre
tournois was raised and sometimes it was lowered.
As a result, far from filling the coffers of the king
this policy prostrated commerce, and the wealth
in the realm of France shrank. When Charles
the Fifth, upon his father's death, ascended the
throne, he called upon Nicole Oresme, in order
that he might reform the coinage of France, to
shed light upon the confused currency of the king-
dom. And thus it was that Oresme prepared
his most important work, already referred to,
the first comprehensive treatise upon money, en-
titled Tractatus De Origine, Natura, Jure et Muta-
tionibus Monetarum.

Of this work many manuscript copies of the
Latin original were made, and also of a French
translation by the author himself under the title,
Traictie de la premiere invention des monnoies.
This translation was placed as early as 1373 at
least in the library collected by the direction of
King Charles in the Louvre.

Oresme, in stating the various workings of
money as the mechanism of exchange, explained
in precious words to his sovereign that, when-
ever the public currency was altered or tampered
with in such a way as to bring into circulation
two moneys, bearing the same designation but
in reality having two different values, the money

10 THE LAW OF

of lower value inevitably drove the money of
higher value out of circulation. For the mer-
chants found it to their advantage either to melt
down the pieces of money that contained the
higher amount of metal and to sell the bullion
by weight or else to export the high weight coins
to other lands. Thus Oresme says: "The rate
of exchange and the price of the moneys must
be for the kingdom as a law and a firm ordinance
which in no way must alter or change." And
further in speaking of the ratio of exchange be-
tween gold and silver, Oresme_jpoints out that
the value or proportion in which those metals
are exchanged in their natural state, is the rate
of exchange that must be maintained between
gold andT silvexlcurrency. For if a given amount
of gold is worth twenty times as much silver, then
a livre of gold would be worth twenty livres of
silver, a mark of gold twenty marks of silver. "But
always this proportion," he says, "must follow
the natural habit or rate of gold to silver, in value."
The mutations of the currency are of great peril
to the national welfare "for the injury which
comes by it," he says, "is not so soon felt nor
seen by the people, as it would be by another
tax, and nevertheless no such nor similar can be
more grievous or greater; and, in addition, gold
and silver, by such mutations and changes, shrink
and diminish in a kingdom, and in spite of all

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM. 11

vigilance and prohibition that may be taken,
they go abroad where they are accorded a higher
value for, by adventure, men carry more volun-
tarily their moneys to the places where they know
these have a greater value."

The luminous treatise of Oresme on money
opened the eyes of King Charles to the disastrous
results to a country whose government attempted
to alter the basic value of its currency. As regent
of France during the captivity by the English
of his father, King John the Second, who was cap-
tured at Poitiers in 1356, Charles had not escaped
the prevailing custom among rulers of that epoch
to fill the royal purse by debasing the coins of
the realm. In the previous century the great
ordinance of 1255, which the States Generals of
France, assembled at Paris, obtained from the
king, Louis the Ninth, promised sound and stable
money for the whole Kingdom of France, so that
the mark of silver should never produce more
than six livre tournois. This royal promise was
broken again and again by the French sovereigns,
and Due Charles, as regent for his captive father,
said the value of the mark should be worth twelve
livre tournois. This cutting in half of the measure
of value was the signal for the great rising at Paris
in 1357 under Etienne Marcel, the Prevost of the
Paris merchants, and it was with difficulty that
the regent reasserted the royal authority in the

12 THE LAW OF

city.6 The distracted and poverty stricken state
of the people and the low ebb of the kingly
power, reenforced by his practical experiences
as regent, caused Charles the Wise, though of a
physique so frail that he could not march at the
head of his army in those years of strife and peril,
yet endowed with a superior mind and seeking
the advice of sage advisers, to set himself to re-
organize the finances of France. The luminous
thoughts expressed in the treatise of Oresme he
made his own, and during his reign the weight
of the gold currency remained a fixed and un-
changed quantity, and that of silver was but very
triflingly altered. The resulting stability in the
value of money, the measure of commercial ex-
change, re-established the regularity of commercial
transactions, and furnished an important element
to public prosperity. The resources of the realm
augmented and with them the power of King
Charles grew. To honor the scholar who had
made plain the confusion that resulted from tam-
pering with the standard of value, the money of
the realm, King Charles had Oresme elected in
1377 Count Bishop of Lisieux in Normandy. And
it was there, two years after the king's death in
1380, that the great economist died on July 11th,
1382, regretted especially by the scholars of his
day.

6 Wolowski.

r

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM. 13

The economic truths that Oresme so well stated
in his treatise on money did not become widely
known, for his work was written for his king's
information, and Gutenberg had not yet made it
possible through printing to give them a wide cir-
culation. The truths that Oresme taught and upon
which Charles the Wise acted, to the profit of his
kingdom and therefore of himself, became in great
measure forgotten. A century and a half after
Oresme 's death they were rediscovered and restated
a second time. In the year 1526, in a Latin treatise
entitled Monete Cudende Ratio, written at the
request of Sigismund the First, King of Poland,
and his Chancellor, Szydlowiecki, Nicolas Copernicus
of Thorn in Prussia, who had elucidated for man-
kind some of the celestial harmonies, gave to the
world an exposition of some of the economic truths.
Independently of the work of Oresme, of which
the Prusso- Polish scholar knew nothing, Copernicus
made clear for his sovereign that two moneys of
unequal value could not be kept in circulation at
the same time. "Gold or silver," he writes, " marked
with an imprint, constitutes the money which
serves to determine the price of things that are
bought and sold, according to the laws established
by the State or the Prince. Money is therefore in
some sort a common measure of estimating values;
but this measure must always be fixed and must
conform to the established rule. Otherwise, there

14 THE LAW OF

would be, necessarily, disorder in the State: buyers
and sellers would at all times be misled, as if the
ell, the bushel or the weights did not maintain
constant quan#ty.

3gC 5JC 5|» 3|» *p *f* 1»

"The establishment of money has necessity for
cause. Though in weighing only gold and silver
it would have been possible to practice exchanges,
those metals, from the unanimous consent of men,
being considered everywhere as precious things,
nevertheless there would be numerous inconveni-
ences to have to carry always weights along, and,
all the world not being apt to recognize at the first
glance the purity of gold and silver, it is agreed
everywhere to have money marked by government
with a stamp designed to show how much each
coin contains of gold and silver and to serve as a
guaranty to public faith."

Then he explains how the value of metal pieces
is changed and depreciated.

"The value of money is depreciated by various
causes, either by the change of the name, while the
same weight of metal contains a mixture of copper
which exceeds the measure desired; or because
the weight is wanting, although the mixture has
been accomplished in the right proportion; or,
what is the worst, because the two vices meet
together at the same time. The value of money
diminishes of itself by reason of a long service that

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM. 15

uses the metal and diminisRs its quantity and
this reason suffices to cause to be placed in circula-
tion a new money. This necessity .is recognized
by an infallible sign, when the money weighs notably
less than the money intended to be acquired. It is
understood that there results a deterioration of the
money."

At the time Copernicus prepared his treatise on
the money of the realm for his sovereign liege,
King Sigismund, the Polish Kingdom included
Thorn, Danzig, and a large part of Prussia. But
a portion of Prussia, including Konigsberg, had
been erected by the treaty of Cracow, concluded
in 1525 between Sigismund, King of Poland, and
Albert, Margraf of Brandenburg, into a hereditary
fief for the benefit of the latter and his male
descendants, which the margraf was to hold of
King Sigismund. As by this feudal tenure by
Margraf Albert of part of Prussia, subject to the
overlordship of the Polish king, the two countries
were in a sense one, Copernicus, in his treatise on
the money of the realm, expounded to his king
what measures were necessary in order to restore
stability to the much depreciated Prussian money
and then maintain the value of the new money on
a parity so that it could circulate both in Poland
and Prussia. After pointing out how useless it was
to attempt to introduce into circulation by the side
of a depreciated currency one of greater value, he

16 THE LAW OF

then explained how the introduction of a cheaper
measure of value by the side of a higher one would
drive the former from circulation. "If it does not
do to introduce a new and good money, while the
old is bad and continues to circulate, a much
greater error is committed by introducing along-
side of an old currency, a new currency of less
value; this latter does not merely depreciate the
old, it drives it away, so to speak, by main force."

Then in answer to the argument that a depre-
ciated currency helps the poor, he says: "We see
nourish the countries that possess a good currency,
while those that only have a depreciated one, fall
into decadence and decline * * * .

"It is incontestable that the countries that make
use of good currency shine in all the arts, have
better workmen, and have of everything in abund-
ance. On the contrary, in the States which make
use of a degraded money, reigns cowardice, lazi-
\ ness and indolence." In order to remedy the dis-
tress to which Prussia had been brought by the
falsification and debasement of the currency, and
to draw Prussia and Poland closer together by
developing their commercial relations, it was neces-
sary to coin two moneys of equal intrinsic value,
so that they would circulate concurrently in the two
lands. One should bear on one side the royal arms
of Poland and on the other those of the Prussian
land. The other money should likewise have on

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM. 17

one side the royal arms of Poland, but on the
other the imprint of the prince, that is the effigy
of the King. " For the first condition to main-
tain, is that one and the other currency remain
under the royal authority, and that they be cur-
rent and accepted in the whole kingdom by vir-
tue of the prescription of His Majesty ; which
would be not of a mediocre importance for the
conciliation of public opinion and for reciprocal
transactions.

" It would be necessary that these two currencies
should be of the same degree of fineness, having a
similar real value and a similar nominal value, so
that, by vigilant care, the State succeeds to main-
tain perpetually the regulation which it is now
question to establish; it does not belong to princes
to obtain any profit from the money that they shall
coin ; they shall add only so much alloy as may be
necessary for the difference between the real value
and the nominal value to cover the cost of minting,
which will avoid the principal attraction to remelt

it.

t .$' $ #. % . .^ . .|

" It would be necessary, at the time of the emis-
sion of the new money, to demonetise the old and
forbid entirely its use, allowing it to be exchanged
at the mints, in the just proposition of the intrinsic
value. Otherwise it would be labor lost to wish
to re-establish good money; the confusion that

18 THE LAW OF

would ensue would be perhaps even worse than the
actual state of affairs. The old money would crush
all the advantages of the new."

Then Copernicus explained that gold and silver
were the base upon which rested the value of
money; and went on to show that in order to
maintain them both in circulation the ratio between
them must agree with the commercial ratio that
existed between them. "It remains," he went on,
"for us to expound the manner of the mutual
exchange of gold and silver. In order to pass from
the class to the kind and from the simple to the
composite, it is necessary first to know the price
of pure gold to pure silver. It is known that the
same exists between pure gold and silver, as
between gold and silver minted under the same
stamp; as also that the same ratio applies to gold
coins and gold bars as to silver coins and silver bars,
provided that they have the same proportion of
alloy and that they represent the same weight."

f As Oresme and Copernicus explained to their
royal Masters that by either debasing or raising

V the coins of the realm disaster and confusion would
\follow, so also, at the beginning of Queen Eliza-
beth's reign, one of her merchants, Sir Thomas
Gresham, pointed out to his royal Mistress this
inflexible unwritten law of money.

Of a Norfolk family, the son of Sir Richard
Gresham, who was Lord Mayor of London, Sir

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM. 19

Thomas Gresham was born in that city probably
in 1519, and died there on November 21, 1579.
He was educated at Cambridge University, was a
Protestant, and all his life took an active part in
commercial affairs, often representing in the Low
Countries the commercial interests of England. In
1566 and 1567 he built the Royal Exchange in
London. He founded also Gresham College, and
provided that the science of astronomy should be
taught there.

In a letter to Queen Elizabeth, which is headed,
"information of Sir Thomas Gresham, Mercer,
touching the fall of the exchange, MDLVIII,"
and which begins, "To the Quenes most excellant
maiestye," Gresham says:

" Ytt may pleasse your majesty to understande,
thatt the firste occasion off the fall of the ex-
chainge did growe by the Kinges majesty, your
latte ffather, in abasinge his quoyne ffrome vi
ounces fine too iii ounces fine. Wheruppon the
exchainge fell ffrome xxvis. viiid. to xiiis. ivd.
which was the occasion thatt all your ffine goold
was convayd ought of this your realme."

The works on money of these three men, who,
independently of one another, expounded to their
respective sovereigns the evils resulting to the
State from any attempt to debase the coinage,
did not become generally known to their con-
temporaries. However, their discoveries through

20 THE LAW OF

the influence of their royal rulers gradually made
some impress upon mankind, and by the end of
the seventeenth century it had become common
knowledge among the intellectuals of that day.
In a pamphlet published in London in 1696, the
Law of Oresme, Copernicus and Gresham, though
doubtless the writer did not know directly of
their works, is thus stated:

* " When two sorts of Coin are current in the
same nation of like value by denomination but
not intrinsically [that is in commercial value],
that which has the least value will be current,
and the other as much,as possible will be hoarded."
"Sx^In 1858 the British economist, Henry Dunning
MacLeod, called attention to Gresham's state-
ment of this unwritten law of coinage, and sug-
gested that it should be known as Gresham's Law.
At the time he did not know of the more elaborate
treatises of Oresme and Copernicus on coinage.
But when the works on money of those two master
economists were revealed through the effort's of
Roscher and Wolowski in 1862 and 1864 to the
world at large, MacLeod, like a true scholar who
wishes to give credit to whom honor is due, sug-
gested that this economic law, a law more power-
ful than the statutes enacted by the strongest
Parliamentary bodies, should be known after all
three of its discoverers as the Law of Oresme,
Copernicus, and Gresham.

ORESME, COPERNICUS, AND GRESHAM. 21

During the centuries, many nations in various
parts of the world have had abundant experience
to learn the futility of attempting to maintain
in circulation as currency two moneys at a ratio
different from the market or commercial ratio
existing at that time between those two kinds
of money. In every case where such an effort
has been made, the money that is underrated
gradually drives that which is overrated from
the country. And this nation has had several
experiences with this law. Without touching here
upon the works of other economic scholars, such
as Petty, Locke, Wolowski, Jevons, Leon Say,
Horton, Bamberger, Laughlin, White and others,
who have added to our knowledge of the unwritten
laws that govern money as the medium of ex-
change, it can be safely said that the more the
economic experience of the human race is studied,
the more does it become clear that any attempt
to tamper with the currency of a Nation by in-
jecting a debased money into its measure of value
is certain to end in disaster through the working
of that natural law of finance, the Law of Oresme,
Copernicus and Gresham.

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