Barter

Barter, in Law, as in usage, is the exchange of goods for goods as distinct from their sale for money. It is the primitive form of trade everywhere; indeed, the propensity to barter is mentioned by Adam Smith as one of the chief traits which distinguishes man from the lower animals; and wherever the value of money is subject to great depreciation (as in the case of over-issue of paper currency) it tends to reappear. But so soon as bills of exchange and other credit substitutes for money are invented, trade again tends to become essentially barter - since what is received in exchange is not money, but purchasing power over goods, a power expressed in terms of money for convenience sake. In political economy it is almost an axiom that, since the invention of bills of exchange, and in recent years of "cable transfers," foreign trade is barter of exports for imports, the differences only being paid in specie.