He examined the circumstances which determine the value of money * * * and be showed that * * * its value will depend on the extent to which it may be issued compared with the demand. This is a principle of great importance; for, it shows that intrinsic worth is not necessary to a currency, and that provided the supply of paper notes, declared to be a legal tender, be sufficiently limited, their value may be maintained on a par with the value of gold, or raised to any higher level. If, therefore, it were practicable to devise a plan for preserving the value of paper on a level with that of gold, without making it convertible into coin at the pleasure of the holder, the heavy expense of a metallic currency would be saved. It appears, therefore, that if there were perfect security that the power of issuing paper money would not be abused; that is, if there were perfect security for its being issued in such quantities, as to preserve its value relatively to the mass of circulating commodities nearly equal, the precious metals might be entirely dispensed with, not only as a circulating medium, but also as a standard to which to refer the value of paper. In adopting a paper circulation-- Says Lord Overstone-- we must unavoidably depend for a maintenance of its due value upon the adoption of a strict and judicious rule for the regulation of its amount. Lord Overstone further declared that: The value of the paper currency results from its being kept at the same amount the metallic currency would have been. Alexander Baring, in his evidence before the secret committee of the House of Lords in 1819, said: The reduction of paper would produce all those effects which arise from the reduction in the amount of money in any country. Prof. F. A. Walker says: Let me repeat, money is to be known by its doing a certain work. Money is not gold, though gold may be money; sometimes gold is money, and sometimes it is not. Money is no one thing, no group of many things having any material property in common. On the contrary, anything may be money; and anything, in a given time and place, is money which then and there performs a certain function. Always and everywhere that which does the money-work is the money-thing. Sir Archibald Alison says: The suspension of specie payment in 1797, making bank notes a legal tender receivable for taxes by providing Great Britain with an adequate internal currency, averted the catastrophe then so general upon the Continent, and gave it at the same time an extraordinary degree of prosperity. Such was the commencement of the paper system in Great Britain, which ultimately produced such astonishing effects, and brought the struggle [of the Napoleonic wars] to a triumphant close. THE TRUE MONEY STANDARD.