L. Randall Wray-9781843769842 Downloaded from https://www. elgaronline. com/at 01/19/2024 08: 52: 59AM via communal account those who thought that they were obtaining a certain weight of gold or silver for their produce were, in reality, getting less, and that this situation produced serious evils among which were a depreciation of the value of money and a consequent rise of prices in proportion as the coinage became more and more debased in quality or light in weight; That to economise the use of the metals and to prevent their constant transport a machinery called ‘credit’has grown up in modern days, by means of which, instead of handing over a certain weight of metal at each transaction, a promise to do so is given, which under favourable circumstances has the same value as the metal itself. Credit is called a substitute for gold.

So universal is the belief in these theories among economists that they have grown to be considered almost as axioms which hardly require proof, and nothing is more noticeable in economic works than the scant [378] historical evidence on which they rest, and the absence of critical examination of their worth.