ARTICLE II: On Exchange and Money Exchange

1142. I. Exchange (echange) is a contract by which two or more persons bind themselves mutually to giving one thing for another.

It differs from sale in this, that its price consists in a thing, since merchandise is constituted as the price of another merchandise. For the rest, it is generally subject to the same rules as sale. Several special things must be read in civil Law.⁰¹

1143. II. Money exchange (change) is an exchange of money for money with profit of the one exchanging. He from whom the exchange is sought is called the money-changer; he who seeks it, the exchange-seeker.

It differs from loan for consumption, because it is of the nature of loan that money be given immediately for use and yield to the good of the one receiving; but in money exchange, money is primarily handed over for exchange and yields to the good of the one giving.

Money exchange is twofold: manual, or small, or trajectitious, according as moneys of diverse account are exchanged from hand to hand, or present money is commuted with absent, through bills of exchange (lettres de change).

Trajectitious exchange is called: a) local or by letters, if the money-changer here, for example at Rome, first accepts moneys, which afterwards, when letters have been given, he refunds elsewhere, for example at Paris, through his factors; b) real or also temporal, to markets, Frankfort, etc., if the money-changer first gives moneys under this law, that he receive them after a certain time elsewhere with profit; c) dry, or fictitious, when the money must be restored indeed in the same place in which it was given, but a diverse place is feigned, which may be a title for the money-changer of perceiving greater gain. This contract is a true loan for consumption, and therefore the same things must be held about it as about loan for consumption (III, 850). For the rest, such a manner of acting is no longer had recourse to.

1144. PRINCIPLE. True money exchange is licit, provided equality is preserved, or the profit does not exceed the just price determined by law or custom. The reason is that there are various titles from which the money-changer can perceive profit, namely: 1. securing of money up to the place of transmission; 2. hiring of work for counting and transmitting money; 3. damage emerging from misfortunes of debtors; 4. expenses and cares in holding the exchange-office (III, 851).

1145. • Questions. QUAER. 1. Whether money exchange is licit for those who do not have a public office of exchange?

Resp. Affirmatively, unless laws stand in the way, for example if it is a question of clerics (III, 831 ff.; H. Ap., X, 192). For anyone has a right to profit to be perceived from his labor and industry.

Hence, a servant receiving from his master a gold coin so that he may satisfy his creditors can exchange it with other coins of equal value, retaining for himself the profit of exchange. Except unless the master wished or ought to have satisfied with a gold coin (III, 856).

QUAER. 2. Whether one accepting an adulterine coin can expend it?

Resp. "If the coin is not materially false, namely if it has been impressed with the sign of the prince, and the material is good and of the same weight, you will be able to expend it, since you infer no damage on another" (III, 855). - But he who would make such a coin would act against the penal law of the State.

"But if an adulterine coin is also materially false, then certainly you will not be able to use it." And if you have expended it in good faith, you are held to restitution, according to the truer opinion: because you are held to pay the just price for the thing bought, which you do not do by paying, for example, tin money for silver (III, l. c.). - Say the same of him who would expend a coin which was outside use. Yet the injustice is less than if he were to give one materially false (Ami du Cl., 1908, p. 347; 1911, p. 637 and 829).