12

A TREATISE ON MONEY

BK. I

was not in fact issued until many centuries after thefirst coinage. On the other hand, it is by no meansessential to Chartalism, that is to say the designationof the standard by the State, that the State shouldmint the standard ; the essential characteristics ofChartalism are already present, even when moneypasses by weight and not by tale, provided that it isthe State which designates the commodity and thestandard of weight.

When the Kings of Lydia first struck coins, it mayhave been as a convenient certificate of fineness andweight, or a mere act of ostentation appropriate tothe offspring of Croesus and the neighbours of Midas.The stamping of pieces of metal with a trade-markwas just a piece of local vanity, patriotism or ad-vertisement with no far-reaching importance. It is apractice which has never caught on in some import-ant commercial areas. Egypt never coined moneybefore the Ptolemies , and China (broadly speaking)has never coined silver, which is its standard of value,until the most recent times. The Carthaginians werereluctant coiners, and perhaps never coined except forforeign activities. The Semitic races, whose instinctsare keenest for the essential qualities of Money, havenever paid much attention to the deceptive signaturesof Mbits, which content the financial amateurs of theNorth, and have cared only for the touch and weightof the metal. It was not necessary, therefore, thattalents or shekels should be minted; it was sufficientthat these units should be State-created in the sensethat it was the State which defined (with the right tovary its definition from time to time) what weight andfineness of silver would, in the eyes of the law, satisfya debt or a customary payment expressed in talentsor in shekels of silver.

The first State reform of the standard of weight,of which we have definite record, was the Babylonianreform towards the end of the third millennium b.c.