A fatuous legalism it may have been, but it was also an age-old expression of the legal source of power of the Great Houses, EM. Further references: FROCKS-VERBAL; IMPERIUM FEUDAL PATTERNS OP; BATTLS OF COUSIN', BergeR Perobler, "History of Proc4s-V"b"w," 3 Quadraaf Law Review, Set 23, 34:1147-76; V. Colivcoh'p, The Tact tf The Great Convention, after the Material from Arrakis (Placentia: Santa Fe), IMPERIAL MONETARY SYSTEM. Despite the relative scarcity of economic information in the documents of Rakis so far examined, a fair amount is known about the commercial and financial systems of the Imperium, Account books and similar materials are among the most widespread end long-lived of all human records; some Richesan insurance records are known to be at least twenty thousand years old. Thus we are able to discuss with some confidence the money matters of the human universe both before die establishment of the Guild monopoly and after that establishment made the development of a uniform monetary system both possible and necessary. In the millennia before the Butlerian Jihad, trade among the twelve to fifteen thousand inhabited planets was common, intense, and disorderly. Even after UK development of the Landsraad mere was no strong central government, and among die wildly different planetary governments and social systems mere was no widespread agreement about the bases of economic value. Thus there was no general medium of exchange. The usual method of interstellar commerce, then, was barter, which method maintained until 491. Until that time, CHOAM and the Great Houses were content to measure fundamental wealth in commodities. But the Guild could not conveniently accumulate commodities. Having no fixed bases, the Guild had no secure storehouses, and its only coin for barter was its service. Sometime during the second century of its monopoly the Guild quietly began to campaign for the establishment of a universal monetary system. In this effort it was probably supported by the Bene Gesserit and perhaps Tleilax and Ix, all of whom would have had some difficulties accumulating great wealth in the form of commodity holdings. (We should recall that most Tleilaxu and Ixian products were of doubtful morality and undoubted illegality.) The Houses Minor would benefit, too, from a money economy, but it seems unlikely that any of them could have exercised much influence in those times. The Guild did, of course, build stores of one unique commodity: melange, the "spice of spices." It was extremely precious, and the supply of it was small though not fixed. Taking it as the standard would have helped keep inflation rates low by limiting the increase of money while yet allowing some increase with the expansion of the economy. The Guild could never permit this use of melange, however, as the nature of their own use had to be kept secret. The Guild apparently tried for a while to reintroduce the ancient lust for precious metals or jewels, hoping, perhaps, to make gold or sapphires a standard, but some of these materials were insufficiently rare, and none of them could be made universally desirable.