Money and trade considered: with a proposal for supplying the nation with money. First published at Edinburgh MDCCV

Money and Trade Considered is an early economic work published in 1705 and written by John Law. John Law of Lauriston was a Scottish economist and financier, founder of the Banque générale and creator of the so-called “Law system.” In this paper, Law tries to compare the prosperity of other countries with the prosperity of Scotland. He also defends the system of "land bank", paper money backed by real estate as a commodity instead of precious metals in the form of gold or silver. John Lowe explores what he believes to be the problems of monetary theory in Scotland. This topic has become increasingly relevant over the previous 150 years, as Europe experienced a growing crisis, the so-called price revolution, where the value of gold fluctuated wildly and generally fell, largely due to the influx of additional gold plundered from the New World. John Law describes the lack of money as important to its value - a valuable lesson learned from the crisis of the previous 2 centuries.