century upon this weighty question; but we know enough to affirm that the monetary doctrine was very developed and very far-seeing.’[1] Buridan analysed the different functions and utilities of money, and explained the different ways in which its value might be changed.[2] He did not, however, proceed to discuss the much more important question as to when the sovereign was entitled to make these alterations.  This was reserved for Nicholas Oresme, who published his famous treatise about the year 1373.  The merits of this work have excited the unanimous admiration of all who have studied it.  Roscher says that it contains ’a theory of money, elaborated in the fourteenth century, which remains perfectly correct to-day, under the test of the principles applied in the nineteenth century, and that with a brevity, a precision, a clarity, and a simplicity of language which is a striking proof of the superior genius of its author.’[3] According to Brants, ’the treatise of Oresme is one of the first to be devoted ex professo to an economic subject, and it expresses many ideas which are very just, more just than those which held the field for a long period after him, under the name of mercantilism, and more just than those which allowed of the reduction of money as if it were nothing more than a counter of exchange.’[4] ’Oresme’s treatise on money,’ says Macleod, ’may be justly said to stand at the head of modern economic literature.  This treatise laid the foundations of monetary science, which are now accepted by all sound economists.’[5] ’Oresme’s completely secular and naturalistic method of treating one of the most important problems of political economy,’ says Espinas, ’is a signal of the approaching end of the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance.’[6] Dr. Cunningham adds his tribute of praise:  ’The conceptions of national wealth and national power were ruling ideas in economic matters for several centuries, and Oresme appears to be the earliest of the economic writers by whom they were explicitly adopted as the very basis of his argument....  A large number of points of economic doctrine in regard to coinage are discussed with much judgment and clearness.’[7] Endemann alone is[8] inclined to quarrel with the pre-eminence of Oresme; but on this question, he is in a minority of one.[9]

[Footnote 1:  Op. cit., p. 186.]

[Footnote 2:  Quaest. super Lib.  Eth., v. 17; Quaest. super Lib.  Pol., i. 11.]

[Footnote 3:  Quoted in Wolowski, op. cit., and see Roscher, Geschichte, p. 25.]

[Footnote 4:  Op. cit., p. 190.]

[Footnote 5:  History of Economics, p. 37.]

[Footnote 6:  Op. cit., p. 110.]

[Footnote 7:  Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. i. p. 359.]

[Footnote 8:  Grundsaetze, p. 75.]

[Footnote 9:  See an interesting note in Brants, op. cit., p. 187.]