ABSTRACT
Every person must see that the demand for uniformity in currency is only one case of the growing demand for uniformity in matters between nations really similar. Many subjects, most subjects of legislation, vary between nation and nation; they depend on national association and peculiar idiosyncracy and other causes. But commerce is everywhere identical; buying and selling, lending and borrowing, are alike all the world over, and all matters concerning them ought universally to be alike too. (Bagehot, A Universal Money, Collected Works, 1868 [1978], Vol. 11, p. 65)
