Abstract

Galiani discusses a subject much debated in the eighteenth century, namely, the nature of the currency. He also includes considerations of economic theory and political philosophy around the main motif. He supports the following theses of monetary theory: currency has the function of a sort of register of credits that every individual can have towards the warehouses of goods of which the society is supplied, and precisely in the measure of the contribution he has given to their supply; the metallic currency has the merit, with respect to a hypothetical system of artificial accounting, to be safe from frauds and not to require a bureaucratic apparatus; the value of currency depends on the value of metals, not on legislative interventions.