to say nothing of an old tradition among ourselves, that in the confused times of the barons wars the like was done in England: but the Hollanders, we know, coined great quantities of paste-board in the year 1574.

As to the form of money, it has been more various than the matter. Under this are comprehended the weight, figure, impression, and value.

For the impression, the Jews, though they detested images, yet stamped on the one side of their shekel the golden pot which had the manna, and on the other Aaron's rod. The Dardans stamped two cocks fighting. The Athenians stamped their coins with an owl, or an ox; whence the proverb on bribed lawyers, Bos in lingua. They of Egina, with a tortoise; whence that other saying, Virtutem et sapientiam vincunt testudines. Among the Romans, the monetarii sometimes impressed the images of men that had been eminent in their families on the coins: but no living man's head was ever stamped on a Roman coin till after the fall of the commonwealth. From that time they bore the emperor's head on one side. From this time the practice of stamping the prince's image on coins has obtained among all civilized nations; the Turks and other Mahometans alone excepted, who, in detestation of images, inscribe only the prince's name, with the year of the transmigration of their prophet.

As to the figure, it is either round, as in Britain; multangular or irregular, as in Spain; square, as in some parts of the Indies; or nearly globular, as in most of the rest.

After the arrival of the Romans in this island, the Britons imitated them, coining both gold and silver with the images of their kings stamped on them. When the Romans had subdued the kings of the Britons, they also suppressed their coins, and brought in their own; which were current here from the time of Claudius to that of Valentinian the younger, about the space of 500 years.

Mr. Camden observes, that the most ancient English coin he had known was that of Ethelbert king of Kent, the first christian king in the island; in whose time all money accounts begin to pass by the names of pounds, shillings, pence, and mancuses. Pence seenis borrowed from the Latin pecunia, or rather from pendo, on account of its just weight, which was about threepence of our money. These were coarsely stamped with the king's image on the one side, and either the mint-master's, or the city's where it was coined, on the other. Five of these pence made their schilling, probably so called from scilingus, which the Romans used for the fourth part of an ounce. Forty of these schillings made their pound; and 400 of these pounds were a legacy, or a portion for a king's daughter, as appears by the last will of king Alfred. By these names they translated all sums of money in their old English testament; talents by pundes; Judas's thirty pieces of silver by thirtig scillinga; tribute-money, by penining: the mite by fearthling.

But it must be observed, they had no other real money, but pence only; the rest being imaginary moneye, i. e. names of numbers or weights. Thirty of these pence made a mancus, which some take to be the same with a mark; manca as appears by an old MS. was quinta pars uncia. These mancas or mancuses were reckoned both in gold and silver. For in the year 680 we read that Ina king of the West Saxons obliged the Kentish men to buy their peace at the price of 30,000 mancas

of gold. In the notes on king Canute's laws, we find this distinction, that mancusa was as much as a mark of silver; and manca a square piece of gold, valued at 30 pence.

The Danes introduced a way of reckoning money by ores, per oras, mentioned in Domesdaybook; but whether they were a several coin, or a certain sum, does not plainly appear. This, however, may be gathered from the Abbey-book of Burton, that 20 ores were equivalent to two marks. They had also a gold coin called byzantime or besant, as being coined at Constantinople, then called Byzantium. The value of which coin is not only now lost, but was so entirely forgot even in the time of king Edward III. that whereas the bishop of Norwich was fined a byzantine of gold to be paid the abbot of St. Edmund's Bury for infringing his liberties (as it had been enacted by parliament in the time of the Conqueror), no man then living could tell how much it was: so it was referred to the king to rate how much he should pay. Which is the more unaccountable, because but 100 years before, 200,000 bezants were exacted by the soldan for the ransom of St. Louis of France; which were then valued at 100,000 livres.

Though the coining of money be a special prerogative of the king, yet the ancient Saxon princes communicated it to their subjects, insomuch that in every good town there was at least one mint; but at London eight; at Canterbury four for the king, two for the archbishop, one for the abbot at Winchester, six at Rochester, at Hastings two, &c.

The Norman kings continued the same custom of coining only pence, with the prince's image on one side, and on the other the name of the city where it was coined, with a cross so deeply impressed, that it might be easily parted and broke into two halves, which, so broken, they called halfpence; or into four parts, which they called fourthings or farthings.

And

In the time of king Richard I. money coined in the east parts of Germany came in special request in England on account of its purity, and was called easterling money, as all the inhabitants of those parts were called Easterlings. shortly after, some of those people skilled in coining were sent for hither, to bring the coin to perfection; which since has been called sterling for Easterling. See STERLING.

King Edward I. who first adjusted the measure of an ell by the length of his arm, herein imiting Charles the Great, was the first also who established a certain standard for the coin, which is expressed to this effect by Greg. Rockley, mayor of London, and mint-master." A pound of money containeth twelve ounces: in a pound there ought to be eleven ounces, two easterlings, and one farthing; the rest alloy. The said pound ought to weigh twenty shillings and three-pence in account and weight. The ounce ought to weigh twenty pence, and a penny twenty-four grains and a half. Note, that eleven ounces twopence sterling ought to be of pure silver, called leaf-silver; and the minter must add of other weight seventeen-pence halfpenny farthing, if the silver be so pure."

About the year 1320 the states of Europe first began to coin gold; and among the rest our king Edward III. The first pieces he coined were called florences, as being coined by Florentines; afterwards he coined nobles; then rose-nobles, current at Gs. and 8d. half-nobles called half-pennies,

at 5s. and 4d. of gold; and quarters at 204. called farthings of gold. The succeeding kings coined rose-nobles, and double rose-nobles, great sovereigns, and half Henry nobles, angels, and shillings.

King James I. coined unites, double crowns, Britain crowns; then crowns, half-crowns, &c.

2. Comparative value of money and commodities at different periods.-The English money, though the same names do by no means correspond with the same quantity of precious metal as formerly, has not changed so much as the money of most other countries. From the time of William the Conqueror, the proportion between the pound, the shulling, and the penny, seems to have been unifortuly the same as at present.

Edward III. as already mentioned, was the first of our kings that coined any gold; and no copper was coined by authority before James I. These pieces were not called farthings, but farthing tokens, and all people were at liberty to take or refuse them. Before the time of Edward DI. gold was exchanged, like any other commodity, by its weight; and before the time of James I. copper was stamped by any one person who chose to do it.

In the year 712 and 727, an ewe and lamb were rated at 1s. Saxon money till a fortnight after Easter. Between the years 900 and 1000, two hides of land, each containing about 120 acres, were sold for 100 shillings. In 1000, by king Ethelred's laws, a horse was rated at 30s. a inare, or a colt of a year old, at 20s. a mule, or young ass, at 12s. an ox at 30s. a cow at 24s. a swine at 8d. sheep at 1s. In 1043, a quarter of wheat was sold for 60d. Hence it is computed, that in the Saxon times there was ten times less money, in proportion to commodities, than at present. Their nominal specie, therefore, being about three times higher than ours, the price of every thing, according to our present language, must be reckoned thirty times cheaper than it is

DOW.

In the reign of William the Conqueror, commodities were ten times cheaper than they are at present; from which we cannot help forming a very high idea of the wealth and power of that king: for his revenue was 400,000l. per annum, every pound being equal to that weight of silver, consequently the whole may be estimated at 1,200,0001, of the present computation; a sum skich, considering the different value of money between that period and the present, was equivalent to 12,000,0001. of modern estimation.

The most necessary commo lities do not seem to have advanced their price from William the Conqueror to Richard I.

Tac price of corn in the reign of Henry III. was near half the mean price in our times. Bishop Fleetwood has shown, that in the year 1240, which was in this reign, 41. 13s. 9d. was worth about 501. of our present money. About the latter end of this reign, Robert de Hay, rector of Souldern, agreed to receive 100s, to purchase to himself and successor the annual rent of 5s. in fall compensation of an acre of corn.

Butcher's meat, in the time of the great scarcity in the reign of Edward II. was, by a parliamentary ordinance, sold three times cheaper than our mean price at present; poultry somewhat lower, because, being now considered as a delicacy, it has risen beyond its proportion. The mean price of corn at this period was half the preeent value, and the mean price of cattle one-eighth. VOL. VIII.

In the next reign, which was that of Edward III. the most necessary commodities were in general about three or four times cheaper than they are at present.

In these times, knights who served on horseback in the army had 2s. a day, and a foot archer 6d. which last would now be equal to a crown a day. This pay has continued nearly the same nominally (only that in the time of the commonwealth the pay of the horse was advanced to 2s. 6d. and that of the foot 1s. though it was reduced again at the Restoration), but soldiers were proportionably of a better rank formerly.

In the time of Henry VI. corn was about half its present value, other commodities much cheaper. Bishop Fleetwood has determined, from a most accurate consideration of every circumstance, that 31. in this reign was equivalent to 281.

or 301. now.

In the time of Henry VII. many commodities were three times as cheap here, and in all Europe, as they are at present, there having been a great increase of gold and silver in Europe since his time, occasioned by the discovery of America.

And

The commodities whose price has risen the most since before the time of Henry VII, are butchers' meat, fowls, and fish, especially the latter. the reason why corn was always much dearer in proportion to other eatables, according to their prices at present, is, that in early times agriculture was little understood. It required more labour and expence, and was more precarious than it is at present. Indeed, notwithstanding the high price of corn in the times we are speaking of, the raising of it so little answered the expence, that agriculture was almost universally quitted for grazing; which was more profitable, notwithstanding the low price of butchers' meat. So that there was constant occasion för statutes to restrain grazing, and to propa ate agriculture; and no effectual remedy was found till the bounty upon the exportation of corn; since which, above ten times more corn has been raised in this country than before.

The price of corn in the time of James I. and consequently that of other necessaries of life, was not lower, but rather higher, than at present: wool is not two-thirds of the value it was then; the finer manufactures having sunk in price by the progress of art and industry, notwithstanding the increase of money. Butchers' meat was higher than at present. Prince Hemy made an allowance of near 4d. per pound for all the beef and mutton used in his family. This may be true with respect to London; but the price of butchers' meat in the country, which does not even now much exceed this price at a medium, has certainly greatly increased of late years, and particularly in the northern counties.

The prices of commodities are higher in England than in France; besides that the poor people of France live upon much less than the poor in England, and their armies are maintained at less expence. It is computed by Mr. Hume, that a British army of 20,000 men is maintained at near as great an expence as 60,000 in France, and that the English fleet, in the war of 1741, required as much money to support it as all the Roman legions in the time of the emperors. However, all that we can conclude from this is, that money is much more plentiful in Europe at present than it was in the Roman empire.

In the 13th century the common interest which the Jews had for their money, Voltaire

I

the standard requires no farther definition, being the direct contrary.

IV. Altering the standard (that is, raising or debasing the value of the money-unit) is like altering the national measures or weights. This is best discovered by comparing the thing altered with things of the same nature which have suffered no alteration. Thus, if the foot of measure was altered at once over all England, by adding to it, or taking from it any proportional part of its standard length, the alteration would be best discovered by comparing the new foot with that of Paris, or of any other country, which had suffered no alteration. Just so, if the pound sterling, which is the English unit, shall be found any how changed, and if the variation it has met with be difficult to ascertain because of a complication of circumstances, the best way to discover it will be to compare the former and the present value of it with the money of other nations which has suffered no variation. This the course of exchange will perform with the greatest exactness.

V. Artists pretend, that the precious metals, when absolutely pure from any mixture, are not of sufficient hardness to constitute a solid and lasting coin. They are found also in the mines mixed with other metals of a baser nature; and the bringing them to a state of perfect purity occasions an unnecessary expence. To avoid, therefore, the inconvenience of employing them in all their purity, people have adopted the expedient of mixing them with a determinate proportion of other metals, which hurts neither their fusibility, malleability, beauty, or lustre. This metal is called alloy; and, being considered only as a support to the principal metal, is accounted of no value in itself. So that eleven ounces of gold, when mixed with one ounce of silver, acquires by that addition no augmentation of value whatever.

This being the case, we shall, as much as possible, overlook the existence of alloy, in speaking of money, in order to render language less subject to ambiguity.

2. Incapacities of the metals to perform the office of an invariable measure of value.

1. Were there but one species of such a substance as we have represented gold and silver to be; were there but one metal possessing the qualites of purity, divisibility, and durability; the inconveniences in the use of it for money would be fewer by far than they are found to be as mat

ters stand.

Such a metal might then, by an unlimited division into parts exactly equal, be made to serve as a tolerably steady and universal measure. But the rivalship between the metals, and the perfect equality which is found between all their physical qualities, so far as regards purity and divisibility, render them so equally well adapted to serve as the common measure of value, that they are universally admitted to pass current as money.

What is the consequence of this? That the one measures the value of the other, as well as that of every other thing. Now the moment any measure begins to be measured by another, whose proportion to it is not physically, perpetually, and invafably the same, all the usefulness of such a measure is lost. An example will make this plain.

A foot of measure is a determinate length. An English foot may be compared with the Paris foot, or with that of the Rhine; that is to say, it may be measured by them: and the proportion between their lengths may be expressed in numbers;

which proportion will be the same perpetually. The measuring the one by the other will occasion no uncertainty; and we may speak of length by Paris feet, and be perfectly well understood by others who are used to measure by the English foot, or by the foot of the Rhine.

But suppose that a youth of twelve years old takes it into his head to measure from time to time, as he advances in age, by the length of his own foot, and that he divides this growing foot into inches and decimals, what can be learned from his account of measures? As he increases in years, his foot, inches, and subdivisions, will be gradually lengthening; and were every man to follow his example, and measure by his own foot, then the foot of a measure now established would totally cease to be of any utility.

This is just the case with the two metals. There is no determinate invariable proportion between their value; and the consequence of this is, that when they are both taken for measuring the value of other things, the things to be measured, like lengths to be measured by the young man's foot, without changing their relative proportion between themselves, change, however, with respect to the denominations of both their measures. An example will make this plain.

Let us suppose an ox to be worth 3000 pounds weight of wheat, and the one and the other to be worth an ounce of gold, and an ounce of gold to be worth exactly 15 ounces of silver if the case should happen, that the proportional value between gold and silver should come to be as 14 is to 1, would not the ox, and consequently the wheat, be estimated at less in silver, and more in gold, than formerly? Farther, would it be in the power of any state to prevent this variation in the measure of the value of oxen and wheat, without putting into the unit of their money less silver and more gold than formerly?

If therefore any particular state should fix the standard of the unit of their money to one species of the metals, while in fact both the one and the other are actually employed in measuring value; does not such a state resemble the young man who measures all by his growing foot? For if silver, for example, be retained as the standard, while it is gaining upon gold one fifteenth additional value; and if gold continue all the while to determine the value of things as well as silver; it is plain, that, to all intents and purposes, this silver-measure is lengthening daily like the young man's foot, since the same weight of it must become every day equivalent to more and more of the same commodity; notwithstanding that we suppose the same proportion to subsist, without the least variation, between that commodity and every other species of things alienable.

Buying and selling are purely conventional, and no man is obliged to give his merchandise at what may be supposed to be the proportion of its worth. The use, therefore, of an universal measure, is to mark, not only the relative value of the things to which it is applied as a measure, but to discover in an instant the proportion between the value of those, and of every other commodity valued by a determinate measure in all the countries of the world.

Were pounds sterling, livres, florins, piastres, &c. which are all money of account, invariable in their values, what a facility would it produce in all conversions, what an assistance to trade! But as they are all limited or fixed to coins, and consequently vary from time to time, this exam

ple shows the utility of the invariable measure which we have described.

There is another circumstance which incapacitates the metals from performing the office of money the substance of which the coin is made is a commodity which rises and sinks in its value with respect to other commodities, according to the wants, competition, and caprices of mankind. The advantage, therefore, found in putting an intrinsic value into that substance which performs the function of money of account, is compensated by the instability of that intrinsic value; and the advantage obtained by the stability of paper, or symbolical money, is compensated by the de. fect it commonly has of not being at all times susceptible of realization into solid property or intrinsic value.

In order, therefore, to render material money more perfect, this quality of metal, that is, of a commodity, should be taken from it; and in order to render paper-money more perfect, it ought to be made to circulate upon metallic or land security.

1mo, By considering one only as the standard, and leaving the other to seek its own value like any other commodity.

2do, By considering one only as the standard, and fixing the value of the other from time to time by authority, according as the market-price of the metals shall vary.

3tio, By fixing the standard of the unit according to the mean proportion of the metals, attaching it to neither; regulating the coin accordingly; and upon every considerable variation in the proportion between them, either to make a new coinage, or to raise the denomination of one of the species, and lower it in the other, in order to preserve the unit exactly in the mean proportion between the gold and silver.

4to, To have two units and two standards, one of gold and one of silver, and to allow every body to stipulate in either.

5to, Or last of all, to oblige all debtors to pay one balf in gold, and one half in the silver standard.

1mo, No money made of gold or silver can circulate long without losing its weight, although it all along preserves the same denomination. This represents the contracting a pair of compasses which had been rightly adjusted to the scale.

2do, Another inconvenience proceeds from the fabrication of money. Supposing the faith of princes who coin money to be inviolable, and the probity as well as the capacity of those to whom they commit the inspection of the business of the metals to be sufficient, it is hardly possible for workmen to render every piece exactly of a proper weight, or to preserve the due proportion between pieces of different denominations; that is to say, to make every ten sixpences exactly of the same weight with every crown-piece and every five shillings struck in a coinage. In proportion to such inaccuracies the parts of the scale become unequal.

3tio, Another inconvenience, and far from being inconsiderable, flows from the expence requisite for the coining of money. This expence adds to its value as a manufacture, without adding any thing to its weight.

4to, The last inconvenience is, that by fixing the money of account entirely to the coin, without having any independent common measure, (to mark and controul these deviations from mathematical exactness, which are either insepara. ble from the metals themselves, or from the fabrication of them,) the whole measure of value, and all the relative interests of debtors and creditors, become at the disposal not only of workmen in the mint, of Jews who deal in money, of clippers and washers of coin; but they are also entirely at the mercy of princes, who have the right of coinage, and who have frequently also the right of raising or debasing the standard of the coin, according as they find it most for their present and temporary interest.

3. Methods which may be proposed for lessening the several inconveniences to which material money is liable.

The inconveniences from the variation in the relative value of the metals to one another may in some measure be obviated by the following expedients.

is exposed from every disorder in the coin.

Let us suppose, at present, the only disorder to consist in a want of the due proportion between the gold and silver in the coin.

This proportion can only be established by the market-price of the metals; because an auginentation and rise in the demand for gold or silver has the effect of augmenting the value of the metal demanded. Let us suppose, that to-day one pound of gold may buy fifteen pounds of silver: if to-morrow there be a high demand for silver, a competition among merchants to have silver for gold will ensue: they will contend who shall get the silver at the rate of 15 pounds for one of gold: this will raise the price of it; and in proportion to their views of profit, some will accept of less than the 15 pounds. This is plainly a rise in the silver, more properly than a fall in the gold; because it is the competition for the silver which has occasioned the variation in the former proportion between the metals.

Let us now suppose that a state, having with great exactness examined the proportion of the metals in the market, and having determined the precise quantity of each for realising or representing the money-unit, shall execute a most. exact coinage of gold and silver coin. As long as that proportion continues unvaried in the market, no inconvenience can result from that quarter in making use of metals for money of account.

But let us suppose the proportion to change; that the silver, for example, shall rise in its value with regard to gold: will it not follow, from that moment, that the unit realized in the silver will become of more value than the unit realized in the gold coin?

But as the law has ordered them to pass as equivalents for one another, and as debtors have always the option of paying in what legal coin they think fit, will they not all choose to pay in gold? and will not then the silver coin be melted down or exported, in order to be sold as bullion, above the value it bears when it circulates in coin? Will not this paying in gold also really diminish the value of the money-unit? since upon this variation every thing must sell for more gold than before, as we have really observed.

Consequently, merchandise, which have not