If there have been no scientific money systems in vogue, and it now comes out that the world has arrived at that degree of advancement wherein _policy_ should give way to _principles_, even in finance, there can be nothing gained by going back to review the errors, failures and fallacies of the past. Nothing valuable can be gained by wading through the almost innumerable statistics which have accumulated to a sufficiently great extent to bewilder the most comprehensive intellects. Having for ten years been deeply engaged in studying the principles of government, I learned that no system of government could be perfect unless its financial department was perfected; therefore I have frequently endeavored to solve the financial problems which statistics propose, but _invariably_ failed to learn anything that even promised to look well as a basis for a new and improved system, to say nothing of its promises in operation. The conclusion was inevitable, that there have been _no_ acknowledged or even known, fundamental principles of finance operating in _any_ of the many systems of the many nations, and that the so-called money of the world _is not now, nor ever was_, money, in the scientific sense of that term. All the statistics, failures and errors of the past, with which the history of money abounds, being of no value, must be utterly ignored in any inquiry which proposes to predicate a natural and scientific money, as distinguished from arbitrary inventions, devised to meet the various exigencies of nations in their growth, prime and decay. And _any_ person who proposes to teach finance, or a new system, by arraying before you the evidences of the past, contained in figures amounting to billions of dollars, simply proposes to try _another experiment_, to _culminate_ in another failure. Therefore I shall present no principals, per cents. and compounded amounts, except, perhaps, as examples to illustrate the mathematical impossibilities of the fallacious theories by which financiers have attempted to dazzle the world, but who have only succeeded in accumulating in the hands of a very select few that which by an exact justice should belong to, and be distributed among, the people generally. In order to intelligently discuss and arrive at legitimate conclusions regarding the question of money, it should be _first_ determined just what is to be involved in the discussion; for around this, as around all other general things, there has been such a mass of rubbish and extraneous matter aggregated that the main question is always in danger of being lost sight of, unless this be first removed and the real issue left clearly exposed.