Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, And Raising the Value of Money.

LOCKE, John.

Item Number: 90396

London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1692.

First edition of John Locke’s classic work on money. Small octavo, bound in full English calf with a red morocco spine label with titles in gilt, gilt bands to the spine, page edges speckled black and red, rebacked. In very good condition. Exceptionally rare.

Set out in a letter to a Member of Parliament in 1691, Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising of the Value of Money contains Locke's general supply and demand theory. Based on the biblical passage "money answers all things" (Ecclesiastes), Locke concludes that the demand for money is exclusively regulated by it quantity regardless of whether the demand for money is unlimited or constant. The argument contains a very early theory of capitalisation, such as land, which has value because "by its constant production of saleable commodities it brings in a certain yearly income." Locke considered the demand for money to be virtually the same as the demand for goods or land and dependent on the desire for money as medium of exchange. As a medium of exchange, he states that "money is capable by exchange to procure us the necessaries or conveniences of life," and for loanable funds, "it comes to be of the same nature with land by yielding a certain yearly income... or interest."