It appears from the accepted definitions that bank checks and bills of exchange are not money. They may to some extent, as other forms of credit may to some extent, add to or increase the rapidity of circulation; but, certainly, credit is not money nor does it possess the essential elements of money. I think it is an essential element of money that when used it closes the transaction between the parties to the transaction. In other words, money, when paid in the purchase of a commodity, closes the transaction, and neither party to the transaction has any further claim or demand against the other. Anything which does this (barter, of course, excluded) is money, and anything which fails to do this is not money. If a credit is given or a check received the transaction is not closed until the debt is paid or the check cashed. I do not find that any economist has made this distinction, in so many words, between money and credit, but I am satisfied that it exists. Does all the money available for use act on prices? It is contended by a certain class of economists that only money of ultimate and final redemption--in other words, gold and silver, in countries where gold and silver are the standard money, and gold only, in countries where gold is the standard money--can act directly on prices, and that other forms of money can only act on prices in an indirect manner, and to the extent only that they may increase the rapidity of the circulation of redemption or standard money; that paper money, whether convertible or inconvertible, covered or uncovered, and token money, can have no direct influence on the general level of prices. Is this contention true? We have already seen that money is a medium of exchange, a counter for reckoning, an order for goods, and that its value does not depend upon the intrinsic qualities which the material out of which it is made may possess, but depends entirely upon extrinsic qualities which law or common consent may confer, and that anything (barter, of course, excluded) that closes transactions between the parties to the transactions, is money; and also that the value of money, that is, its purchasing power, is fixed and regulated by the amount of money available for use. Why, then, should any part of the money that possesses and discharges all the functions of money be excluded? What peculiar property has money stamped on gold and silver that it only can act on prices? John Stuart Mill says: