As a matter of fact, it was legally abolished as early as 1734 by 14 George II., c. 42, and still earlier by actual practice. There were two circumstances that made A. Müller capable of a so-called higher conception of political economy: first, his wide ignorance of economic facts; second, his dilettanti-like visionary attitude toward philosophy. [44] “Ἀνάχαρσις, πυνθανομένου τινὸς, πρὸς τί οί Ἕλληνες χρῶνται τῷ ἀργυρίῳ ἕιπε πρὸς τὸ ἀριθμεῖν.” (Athen. Deipn. l. IV. 49. v. 2, ed. Schweighäuser, 1802.) (When Anacharsis was asked for what purpose the Greeks used money, he replied, “For reckoning.―‘’“”) [45] G. Garnier, one of the early French translators of Adam Smith, conceived the queer notion of fixing a proportion between the use of money of account and that of actual money. His proportion is 10 to 1. (G. Garnier, “Histoire de la Monnaie depuis les temps de la plus haute antiquité,” etc., t. 1, p. 78.) [46] The act of Maryland in 1723 by which tobacco was made the legal standard, but its value reduced to terms of English gold money, namely one penny equal to one pound of tobacco, reminds of the “leges barbarorum,” in which, inversely, certain sums of money were expressed in terms of oxen, cows, etc. In that case neither gold nor silver, but the ox and the cow were the actual material of the money of account. [47] Thus, we read, e. g., in the “Familiar Words” of Mr. David Urquhart: “The value of gold is to be measured by itself; how can any substance be the measure of its own worth in other things? The worth of gold is to be established by its own weight, under a false denomination of that weight―and an ounce is to be worth so many pounds and fractions of pounds. This is falsifying a measure, not establishing a standard.―‘’“” [48] “Money is the measure of Commerce, and of the rate of everything, and therefore ought to be kept (as all other measures) as steady and invariable as may be. But this cannot be, if your money be made of two Metals, whose proportion ... constantly varies in respect of one another.” John Locke: Some Considerations on the Lowering of Interest, etc., 1691 (p. 166, p. 65 in his Works 7 ed., London, 1768, vol. III.)