ART. IV. Traictie de la première invention des Monnaies de NICOLE ORESME; Textes Français et Latin d'après les Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Impériale; et Traité de la Monnoie de COPERNIC, Texte Latin et traduction Française. Publiés at annotés par M. L. WOLOWSKI, Membre de l'Institut. Paris. 8vo. 1864.

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HE first of these Treatises on Money is the work of a schoolman and a bishop, who was buried about five hundred years ago in the choir of his own cathedral at Lisieux, and who had well-nigh passed away from the memory of men, when a lucky accident drew the attention of a German professor of our own day to this remarkable prelate, and the zealous researches of M. Wolowski have since restored him to his proper position as one of the Fathers of economical science. The second Treatise on the same subject, which is included in this volume, is from the pen of Copernicus, who seems to have applied to the relations of society the same searching intellect and sound reasoning which arrested the sun in its course and restored the true economy of the heavens. We are extremely indebted to M. Wolowski for the care he has bestowed on this curious publication. He has collected the manuscripts, revised the texts, translated a portion of the original Latin essay, thrown a flood of light on the personal history of Nicole Oresme, their forgotten author. But it is not merely a love of antiquity that has directed his labours. The most curious part of the discovery is that this treatise, written in France about the year 1373, at one of the darkest and most turbulent periods of the history of that kingdom, a few years after the battle of Poictiers, and in the earlier years of the reign of Charles le Sage, is an exposition of the theory of money, so clear that it might have proceeded from the pen of Adam Smith, and so correct that it would not be disowned by any member of the Political Economy Club. When it is remembered how long and how generally the grossest fallacies prevailed on this subject-if, indeed, they are even now dissipated; when we call to mind the volumes which have been written to reduce the definitions of value and of price to the simplicity of truth; when we are reminded of the gross and scandalous abuses by which the princes of the Middle Ages were continually endeavouring to eke out their resources by tampering with the currency, and that these practices have not entirely ceased in some parts of the world, even amidst the lights of our own age; it is nothing short of marvellous that a churchman of the fourteenth cen

tury should have left behind him a succinct treatise, in which the principles that govern the great questions of the currency, of coin, and of exchange are stated with equal force and cision.

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It has hitherto been acknowledged that the true theory of money was first explained with admirable clearness and force of reasoning by Locke, in his Considerations of the lowering of Interest and raising the Value of Money;' and no doubt it was on this solid basis that Montague and Somers rested their vigorous measures for the restoration of the British currency to its true intrinsic value in 1695. But there is scarcely a point in Locke's Treatise which Nicole Oresme had not some glimpse of. In more recent times the late Mr. Senior wrote a very able paper on Money, which is justly considered to be one of the most lucid and demonstrative of his economical writings; but as the true principles of the science are few in number and uniform in their application, when once ascertained, we are not sure that he added anything essential to the doctrine of Nicolas Oresme, of whom, in all probability, he had never heard. We shall shortly lay before our readers the leading propositions of this remarkable Essay, but we must first inform them by what means it was brought to light, and then give them some account of its author.

The discovery, for such it may be called, of this work is due to M. Wilhelm Roscher, a distinguished Professor of Political Economy in the University of Leipsig, whose curiosity was excited by the casual mention, in some forgotten author, of a treatise by Nicolas Oresme De Origine et Jure necnon et de • Mutationibus Monetarum.' This Essay had been reprinted in 1589 in the Sacra Bibliotheca sanctorum Patrum' of Margarinus de la Bigne, from the first edition, printed by Thomas Keet in the earlier part of the sixteenth century. Of this edition one copy exists in the Imperial Library at Paris. In that magnificent collection is also to be found a printed copy (without date) of the contemporary French translation. But the manuscript which has been collated and used by M. Wolowski in the present edition dates from the fifteenth century. It belonged to an ecclesiastical library at Paris down to the Revolution, and is still in its original binding, stamped with the arms of the first owner. Two Latin MSS. of the Essay also exist, one in the library at Poictiers, and another in the Burgundian Library at Brussels.

Having procured a copy of one of the earlier editions of the work, M. Roscher proceeded to examine it, when,' he exclaims, what was my surprise to find in my hands a theory of Money,

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'elaborated in the fourteenth century, but still perfectly correct ' and consistent with the doctrines of the nineteenth century, ' and expressed with a terseness, precision, lucidity, and sim'plicity of language, which attest the superior genius of the 6 author. The whole work is so remote from the notion com'monly entertained of the barbarism of the Middle Ages, that one might have suspected some trick, if there had been any 'ground for such a suspicion, and if the appearance of such a 'work had not been just as improbable at the commencement of the sixteenth as in the fourteenth century.' Having satisfied himself of the high merit of the treatise, M. Roscher addressed to that branch of the Institute of France of which he is a corresponding member, a notice of its scientific excellence, and this appears to have been the first acknowledgment of its real importance in the history of political economy. It is, however, just to remark that the existence of the treatise had been adverted to in 1846 by M. Lecointre-Dupont, in his Letters on the Monetary History of Normandy and La Perche, and it had been more fully described by M. Francis Meunier in an Essay on the life and writings of Nicolas Oresme, published in 1857. The volume now before us comprises, in the most complete form, the Latin and French texts of the Essay, and M. Wolowski has added to the researches of his predecessors a good deal of interesting matter; so that we are now probably in possession of all that can be known of the author and of his book.

Nicole or Nicholas Oresme appears to have been born either at Caen or at Bayeux in the early part of the fourteenth century, and in 1355 he attained the dignity of Grand Master of the College of Navarre, in which he had been brought up. The biographers all relate that he was chosen in 1360 by King John to be the preceptor of his son, who afterwards ascended the throne, and who not only bore, but deserved, the name of Charles le Sage. But this must be a mistake, for Charles was in that year twenty-three years old, and had assumed the supreme power as Regent of the kingdom immediately after the Battle of Poictiers in 1356. There is, however, great reason to believe that Nicole Oresme, though not his preceptor, was one of his wisest counsellors, and in 1377 Charles raised him to the see of Lisieux. The prelate had previously held the deanery of Rouen. Like many of the most enlightened men of that remarkable age, Oresme did not escape the charge of heresy; for in 1363. being called upon to preach at Avignon in presence of Urban V. and all the Papal Court, he had delivered a severe reproof of the enormities of the princes of the Church.

We have searched with some curiosity to discover traces of any intercourse between Oresme and Petrarch at that time. They must in all probability have been acquainted with one another, and when Petrarch presented to the King of France a copy his Treatise De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ,' it is said that Charles ordered Oresme to translate it; though even this statement is controverted. A still more important work which is attributed to him is a translation of the Vulgate into the French tongue, undertaken by order of the King, who wished to fight the Waldenses with their own weapons. His original works are chiefly theological treatises, after the manner of the schoolmen, and an attack on judicial astrology, which was cited and praised by Pico della Mirandola. Amongst these works the Treatise on Money was found.

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Nor is this a solitary instance of an application of scholastic acuteness in the Middle Ages to questions of economical science. It has been justly remarked by Professor Roscher, that the schoolmen, and especially John Scotus Erigena, paid more attention to these subjects than is commonly supposed; but they arrived at the discussion of them by a strange path of reasoning. The consideration of the sacrament of Repentance naturally led them to weigh those offences or supposed offences against the laws of morality which also violated the rules of public economy, and to examine the evils resulting from them; and they were thus led to examine the grounds on which these obligations rest. The condemnation of usury by the Church as mortal sin led to interminable discussions of this nature; and it is one proof of our Bishop's enlarged and reasonable mind that he condemns the depreciation of the currency as a far greater crime than that of usury, because, he says, the 'usurer lends his money to a man who voluntarily borrows it, and who uses it to the relief of his own necessities, upon terms which are the result of a contract entered into to their

* But of this translation no copy is known to exist, and the Bible had been translated into French nearly a century before, in 1294, by Guyart des Moulins, a canon of Aix. During the captivity of King John at the Savoy in the Strand, it appears from the Duke d'Aumale's catalogue of his privy expenses, that he had with him a French bible; for thirty-two pence were paid to 'Margaret the 'bindress' for covering afresh a French bible and putting four clasps to it. M. Michelet asserts that Charles V. caused the Bible to be translated for him by his Attorney-General, Raoul de Presles, whilst a worthy Prior wrote for his Majesty a treatise on the Laws of War, and the Bishop of Lisieux translated Aristotle. But he does not furnish us with the evidence of these statements.

'mutual satisfaction; but the depreciation of the currency is 'an undue and arbitrary act, by which the Prince takes the 'money of his subjects from them without their consent, since he commands them to take bad money for good.' (Cap. 17.) But this truth was so little recognised as a moral and political obligation during the Middle Ages, and indeed for many centuries later, that the depreciation of the currency was the continual expedient of bad governments, as, indeed, it has been in some parts of Germany even in our own time. Philip le Bel lowered the standard of the livre tournois twenty-two times in the last nineteen years of his reign. In England, under Edward I., Edward II., and Edward III., the same abuses took place; and in 1381 the Commons represented to Richard II. that the depreciation of the current coin of the realm was one of the grievances that had ruined the kingdom. In fact it was not until the close of the seventeenth century that the evil was corrected even in this country*, and in France it subsisted till the Revolution of 1789. But no sovereign had carried to so extravagant an excess the supposed royal right of fixing the value of the coin of the realm as the rash and luckless King John of France. Between 1351 and 1360 the livre tournois changed its value seventy-one times, and in the years 1359 and 1360 alone these changes amounted to sixteen and seventeen times respectively in each year. The marc of silver was fixed at five livres five sols, but such was the debasement of the coin that it rose in 1359 to 200 livres, an anticipation of the assignats of 1794 by supreme order of the King of France. For the Crown asserted that to itself alone belonged the right of making whatever 'money it thought fit for the whole kingdom, and of giving currency thereunto;' and an absurd attempt was made to restrain the officers of the Royal Mint from disclosing the real value of the coin they issued.†

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* The denominations, weight, and fineness of English silver coins were fixed by the 43rd Elizabeth (1601), and have since remained unchanged, except by the introduction of the florin and the fourpenny piece. But the silver coin of England was subject to perpetual variation by the offence of clipping down to the end of the seventeenth century. The reader will readily call to mind the inimitable description of the measures taken to secure the uniformity of the British currency, which is to be found in Lord Macaulay's 'History of England,' cap. xxi.

Si aucun demande à combien les blancs sont de loy, feignez 'qu'ils sont à six deniers.' The debased coin was to be struck with the same dies afin que les marchands ne puissent apercevoir l'abaissement, à peine d'être déclarés traîtres.' (Michelet, Hist. de Fr., vol. iv. p. 262: ed. Bruxelles.)