LI E) R.AR.Y 
 
 OF THL 
 
 U NIVLR.SITY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS
 
 AN 
 
 ESSAY ON MONEY, 
 
 ITS 
 
 ORIGIN AND USE. 
 
 •' If argunfents a posteriori, were to be used in this case, I should 
 be very apt to give Caiti tlie honour of the invention : were he now 
 alive, I am sure it would rejoice liis soul to see what mischief it 
 had made amonjc mankind." — AnBuiuNOT on Coins. 
 
 SECOND EDITION, CORRECTED AND ENLARGED. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HATCHARD AND SON, PICCADILLY. 
 
 1833.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY STEWART AND CO. 
 
 OT.I) BAILEY.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MEANING OF THE WORD 'MONEY.' 
 
 Properly denotes a ^oAen of value, not its reality — Paulus — 
 Suidas — Gesner — Money applied first to the substitute of a 
 cheap for a dear thing ; of a smaller for a larger coin — 
 Absurdity of supposing that intrinsic value is essential to 
 money. 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 NATURE OF REAL MONEY. 
 
 Money distinguished into real and symbolic — Definition of real 
 money — Gold — Silver — Brass — Copper — valued according 
 to purity and weight — Cattle — Slaves — Corn — Goods and 
 Chattels — Houses and Lands — Abundance of real money, in 
 England, at this time — Distress — Not possible with barter — 
 Not occasioned by a deficiency or excess of real money. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 NATURE OF SYMBOLIC MONEY. 
 
 Definition — Exchequer Bills, a perfect specimen — also Tallies 
 — Origin of Bills and Tallies — both different in principle 
 from our present Bank of England Notes — Distress caused 
 by that difference — Mode of relief — Great saving to the 
 state — Immediate reduction of the debt to the Bank, and of 
 the unfunded debt — Rapid reduction of the National Debt. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OP COIN. 
 
 Definition of coin — Properly an instrument of taxation, a receipt 
 for stores, &c. — Illustrations from the New Testament —
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 from the History of England in the Norman, Saxon, and 
 Roman eras — from the earliest coins and histories of France — 
 Rome — Greece. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 Coin not valuable as a security in times of danger — • Loss by 
 symbolic money, highly improbable — by the use of coin cer- 
 tain — especially to the productive classes — Change of system 
 recommended — Incapability of coin to suffice for a growing 
 community — Effects of the Mosaic code, and of a contrary 
 course among the Jews — of the laws of Lycurgus, and of a 
 contrary course among the Spartans — of the laws of Solon, 
 and of a contrary course among the Athenians — History of 
 coin among the Romans — M. Niebuhr's Observations on 
 the obvious Policy of England at the present crisis — History 
 of coin in France — and in England. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY, AS A CIRCULATING 
 MEDIUM. 
 
 Capability of expansion and contraction — Amount governed by 
 the amount of Taxation — Difference between Exchequer 
 Bills and Assignats — Readiness of conversion into gold or 
 silver — Prices governed by the amount of Taxation — Value 
 unaffected by Taxes — Weight of Taxes and of Debt increased 
 by low prices — Price of Gold governed like that of other 
 commodities by the amount of Taxation — Panics avoided by 
 symbolic money — Security of Bankers, Merchants, Manufac- 
 turers, under such a system — Symbolic money the perfection 
 of barter — Universal prosperity — Description of Lacedsemon 
 applicable to England — Plato's idea of a commonwealth 
 realised in England — Sir Thomas More's idea — Summary — 
 Symbolic money the privilege of a free people. 
 
 ERRATUM. — Page 11. line 1. /o»' Athenaeus read Pausanias.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MONEY. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 MEANING OF THE WORD ' MONEY.' 
 
 For some years past, inquiries into the Origin 
 and Use of Money have occasionally occupied 
 my leisure hours, and afforded me recreation after 
 the discharge of duties more necessary, though 
 less agreeable than the study of Numismatics. 
 In this way, probably, I should have continued 
 to amuse myself, w^ith no ulterior views, had not 
 circumstances arisen which converted what was 
 previously a source of private gratification, into a 
 pursuit of higher character. My investigations, 
 as I proceeded, began to assume a more serious 
 aspect, and to promise usefulness to my country 
 in the place of solitary entertainment. 1 saw that, 
 generally speaking, there were truths in the theory 
 of money " not dreamt of in our philosophy." 
 
 B
 
 2 MEANING OF THE WORD * MONEY.' 
 
 The growing distresses of the people convinced 
 me that these truths had a most important bear- 
 ing on our times ; and that I should fail to dis- 
 charge my duty unless I communicated to my 
 countrymen, and to society at large, those facts 
 and inferences, which, in my opinion, were mate- 
 rially calculated to affect the interests of all ranks 
 of people in every country, but especially in our 
 own. Under these impressions I published, in 
 182], a pamphlet on " The Restoration of Na- 
 tional Prosperity, shewing it to be immediately 
 practicable." I am still of opinion that it is in 
 the power of Government to produce at will the 
 restoration of prosperity ; and if the present Ad- 
 ministration could be inattentive to this great duty, 
 which all their speeches and actions forbid us to 
 believe, the people of England are not yet, I 
 trust, so sunk in indifference or despair, as to 
 permit themselves to be irrecoverably lost, while 
 a way to the salvation of the state is laid open to 
 them. 
 
 To those who are accustomed to consider Money 
 in no other light than as Coin, or paper obligations 
 to pay in coin, the large sense in which the word 
 is taken at the commencement of this inquiry may 
 seem startling ; but as we advance, the propriety 
 of it will become apparent. Money is a term 
 employed with three different significations : being 
 used to denote, 1st, that which has intrinsic value; 
 2dly, that which has eMrinsic value ; 3dly, that 
 which combines both, which is its common ac-
 
 MEANING OF TJIE WORD ' MONEY. 3 
 
 ceptation with us as coin. But strictly speaking, 
 the word Money properly implies eMrinsic value ; 
 for gold and silver then first become money, when 
 they are coined into tokens representing a value 
 put upon them by authority of the state which is- 
 sues them. Accordingly, Paulus, the lawyer, de- 
 fines it to be a thing impj^essed with a public stamp;* 
 the stamp giving it value. Our word money, which 
 is the same as the Anglo-Saxon monige,-\ an admo- 
 nition, token, or remembrance, expresses this. We 
 find the word written monung in the Anglo-Saxon 
 version of the New Testament, where Matthew is 
 described as sitting at the receipt of '' gafoVs mo- 
 mmg,''\ that is, the receipt of " the token of tribute.^ 
 Matthew was one of the ^o//-collectors or farmers 
 of the tribute under the government of the Ro- 
 mans, an office of such discredit among the people, 
 that Plutarch says, even the usurers " think the 
 taking to farm the customs and other public tri- 
 butes, which the laws nevertheless permit, to be a 
 shame and reproach." |( The toll which Matthew 
 was collecting was probably the tax payable by 
 strangers on entering a city, which was sometimes 
 made an occasion of much ill treatment. Plutarch 
 relates, that " As Lycurgus was walking one day 
 in the streets, he saw an officer lay hand on Xeno- 
 
 * See Danet's Diet. Monet a. 
 
 t Monige : Monitio, recensio. Lye's Saxon Diet. 
 
 I Gafol's monung : tributi (sc. solvendi) notificatio. Idem. 
 § Matt. ix. 9. 
 
 II Plutarch's Morals : against Usury. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 MEANING OF THE WORD 'MONEY. 
 
 crates the philosopher, and when nothing would 
 serve his turn but the philosopher must go to pri- 
 son, because he had not deposited the tribute due 
 from strangers, he with his staff struck the officer 
 on the head for his unmannerly roughness towards 
 a person of that character, and freeing Xenocrates, 
 cast the other into prison in his stead."* The col- 
 lection of such a tax could not fail, under any 
 circumstances, to be a fertile source of discontent. 
 The word Moneta signifies a token, being de- 
 rived from Monere,-\ as all authorities concur in 
 stating. The reason of its original application is 
 found in the following story : — " The Romans, 
 being in want of money to carry on the war 
 against Pyrrhus and the Tarentines, implored aid 
 of Juno. She replied, that if they bore arms with 
 justice, funds should not fail them. Having thus 
 obtained their prayer, they worshipped Juno under 
 the title of Moneta, the Adviser; and decreed 
 that the [new] money should be struck in her tem- 
 ple. "J Gesner observes, that Suidas, who relates 
 this story, is not a very good authority in matters 
 of history, but that the narrative carries with it 
 
 * Plutarch's Lives of the Ten Philosophers. 
 
 f Gesneri Lexicon : Moneta a monendo dicta. 
 
 X Mov^ra* ?/ 'Hpa irapa 'Ftofiaiois e^ airias roiavrris' 'Fwfiaioi 
 ^erfdevTES ')(^pr]fiaTu)v ev rw Trpos Tlvppov Kai Tapevrivas TroXe^t^, 
 ■qv^avTO Trj Hpa. rrfv Ce ■)(pr)(Tai avTOis, ei ro)v ottXcjv avde^ovrai 
 fjisra CiKai.oavvr]s, ^pjjjuara avTOis firi eTriXeiipeiv. Tv^ovres ovp o'l 
 'Pw/MttToi rfjs airrjffetJS, erifirfcray 'Upav MoyfiTav, tutectti, <7i»^/3b- 
 Xov TO vojxiana ev t<o lEpu avTijs bpiaavTES ^aparrEadai, SuidcE 
 Lex,
 
 MF.AXIXG OF THE WORD * MONEY. O 
 
 an air of probability ; and that from this circum- 
 stance the place where money is coined, is also 
 called Monet a, a Mint. * 
 
 Notwithstanding this grave admission of the 
 probable truth of the story, we shall treat it with 
 greater fairness if we regard it as a fable, whose 
 moral is this : — The Romans being in want of 
 money, and of that material (brass) which consti- 
 tuted money with them, were obliged to have re- 
 course to a substitute. By means of this, so long 
 as they carried on war with justice, — so long as 
 in all public and private transactions that substi- 
 tute was faithfully taken and paid as money, — 
 wealth (that is, those things which money repre- 
 sented) should never be wanting to them. They 
 adopted silver for this purpose, because, though 
 it was an article little esteemed by them, as being 
 of no great use, it was on that account not the less 
 convenient as the representative of other things 
 which were necessary. For this reason silver 
 money became an admonisher, or remembrancer of 
 value ; and the temple of Juno in which it was 
 prepared, (brass being coined in that of Saturn,) 
 was called the temple of Juno the Alonitress. 
 Suidas says, this took place when the Romans 
 were at war with Pyrrhus, who was defeated by 
 Curius, B. C. 274. Livy refers the first coining 
 
 * Non satis bonus historiae auctor Suidas ; sed narratio haec 
 probabilis. Inde enim est quod Moneta est oflicina quaevis 
 nummis cudendis. Gesn. Lex. Moneta.
 
 6 MEANING OF THE WORD * MONEY.' 
 
 of silver to the same period.* And Pliny con- 
 firms it ; t but he more particularly fixes the year 
 to the 485th of Rome, or the fifth before the first 
 Punic war, viz., B.C. 269. The war against the 
 Tarentines, when they were assisted by Pyrrhus, 
 led then, as wars have ever since done, to the ex- 
 haustion of the treasury, and compelled the Ro- 
 mans to devise a means of supplying the absence 
 of what they esteemed their proper money, that 
 they might be prepared to resist a new enemy. 
 
 I am inclined to think, however, that the true 
 cause of the use of the word Moneta, as applied 
 to money, is to be found in the substitution of a 
 less coin for a larger, rather than in the first em- 
 ployment of silver as money. By the adoption of 
 an inferior piece of money, which should pass 
 current for the value of a larger coin, the real 
 sense of the word Moneta is recognised in the 
 transaction. Then it may, indeed, be said, that if 
 the State keeps faith with the people, and receives 
 the new coin at the same nominal value at which 
 it was issued, means would never be wanting for 
 carrying on a just war. It is certain that the in- 
 ferior coin with a high nominal value speedily did 
 appear after the period here assigned to the origin 
 of silver money, for within thirty years of that 
 
 * Victis Tarentinis.. . . tunc primum populus Romanus ar- 
 gento uti ccepit. Livy, Epit. B. 15. 
 
 t Populus Romanus ne argento quidem signato, ante Pyrrhum 
 regem devictum usus est. Pliny, B. 33. c. 13.
 
 MEANING OF THE WORD ' MONEY. / 
 
 time we find the denarius of silver had fallen 
 to one-sixth its former weight, or from the value 
 of 10*. to that of 1*. M. in our money, though it 
 still was held to represent 10*. as at first; and 
 tlie ase of brass from a pound to two ounces — 
 that is, from 1*. to 2d. English. 
 
 Silver coin, therefore, with the Romans, was 
 money, not as possessing intrinsic value, but from 
 being declared, on the faith of the state, to be a re- 
 mtmhrancer or token of an assumed value ; and this 
 value, which was first fixed at a much lower rate 
 than subsequently, was, in each case, assigned it 
 by an arbitrary act, which rendered its intrinsic 
 value of so little consequence, that the Romans 
 considered it — what the terms moneta, symbolum, 
 a token, indicate ■ — a mere substitute, or representa- 
 tive of value, convertible by common consent into 
 other things, as truly as if it were so many pounds 
 of brass, or ounces of silver. 
 
 The precise meaning of money is therefore that 
 of a token, a symbol, a memorandum, in which cha- 
 racter we shall consider it when we come to speak 
 of symbolic money. In the meantime, it deserves 
 to be noticed, that this very sense of a token of value, 
 and not the reality, is that which many persons in the 
 present day deny to money ; while, on the other 
 hand, they would invest it with that identical cha- 
 racter, intrinsic value, which the origin and name 
 of money prove it was never intended to possess. 
 Mistakes in etymology are too common to be
 
 8 MEANING OF THE WORD * MONEY.' 
 
 much regarded ; but when, in opposition to com- 
 mon sense, they are persisted in, and acted upon, 
 to the manifest injury of the community, they 
 ought to be treated with somewhat more severity 
 than merely speculative errors. Seldom, how- 
 ever, do men commit such an absurdity as to 
 attribute to a thing that very quality which its 
 name declares it to have been deficient in.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 NATURE OF REAL MONEY. 
 
 Money, in the common acceptation of the word, 
 is of two kinds. Real and Symbolic. 
 
 Real Money consists oi all those things which, 
 in return for a sufficient inducement, are capable of 
 being transferred from one person to another * 
 
 Real money is synonymous with Property, Ca- 
 pital, and Stock. Such money had its origin in 
 the earliest conditions of the social state, as soon 
 as the notions mine and thine were called into ex- 
 istence. Its essence is ijitrinsic value. 
 
 The various metals, by weight, according to 
 their estimation as articles of use or ornament, 
 (and we read of " fine brass, precious as gold," f) 
 — the numberless works of human ingenuity, — 
 
 * Money was considered in this light by the editor of " The 
 Times," when he wrote the following passage : — " England, by 
 her corn laws and her severe timber duties, has put it out of the 
 power of foreigners to pay for British manufactures in the only 
 coin which is abundant with them, viz. their several raw produc- 
 tions." Times, Uth Dec. 1830. 
 
 t Ezra, viii. 27.
 
 10 NATURE OF REAL MONEY. 
 
 the fruits of the earth, — living creatures, sheep, 
 oxen, horses, slaves, — even houses and lands, are 
 all so many different kinds of real money, and have 
 been so considered from the earliest ages. Abra- 
 ham bought a burial-place of Ephron the Hittite 
 for a certain weight of silver, viz. 400 shekels.* 
 Jacob bought part of a field of the children of 
 Hamor for 100 lambs (kesitah), or pieces of money, 
 as this word is rendered in our translation of the 
 Bible. f The riches of Job, the greatest of all 
 the men of the East, consisted of real money, 
 sheep, camels, oxen, and asses ; and after his af- 
 fliction, he received from every one of his ac- 
 quaintance a lamb {kesitah), and an ear-ring of 
 gold.'^ Coined money was unknown till ages 
 after. Neither Hesiod nor Homer speaks of it. 
 The latter estimates the golden armour of Glaucus 
 at 100 oxen, and the brazen armour of Diomed 
 at 9, thus placing brass in the same relation to 
 gold which silver is supposed to have borne at 
 that early period. § Laertes bought the beautiful 
 slave Euryclea for 100 oxen. || Polydorus, who 
 reigned over Sparta 130 years before Lycurgus, 
 left a widow, to whom the Lacedaemonians de- 
 
 * Gen, xxiii. 15, 16. The shekel at this time was probably 
 an ounce. 
 
 t Gen. xxxiii. 19. It is not certain whether ntO''tl?p means 
 a lamh, or a certain weight of silver or gold : but in either case 
 it was real money. 
 
 X Job, xlii. 11. § Iliad, B. vi. line 236. 
 
 II Odyssey. B.i. line 430.
 
 NATURE OF KEAL MONEY. 11 
 
 creed, according to Athenaeus, a certain number 
 of oxen, as the means of buying her a house. 
 Pliny informs us that in the earliest times it was 
 common to make purchases with hides of oxen, 
 with iron, and the various spoils of war; that 
 then, coined money being unknown, men inter- 
 changed commodities for mutual advantage. * 
 None but real money was known to the early 
 Egyptians, skilful as they were in refinements, 
 and the inventors of so many useful arts. *' He- 
 rodotus, who is so full in his account of them, 
 does not once mention their coin. The cabinets 
 of the curious shew no such ; and the learned 
 author of the Travels into the East, in a private 
 conversation on this subject some years ago, as- 
 sured me (says Ainsworth, the Commentator on 
 the Pentateuch) that his most diligent inquiry 
 could not discover, or hear of, in all Egypt, any 
 coin more ancient than the Ptolemies, or that 
 seemed to be the work of the true Egyptians. 
 How possible it is for a numerous nation to traffic 
 without stamped money or coin, is evident from 
 the Chinese, who now carry on trade in both 
 small and great concerns with silver by weight." 
 
 It was real money which the Israelites carried 
 into Egypt, when they went to buy corn of Pha- 
 raoh, in the time of Joseph. In the original, it is 
 simply called silver, which word is applied in 
 
 * Pliny, Nat. Hist. B, 33. c. 3.
 
 12 NATURE OF REAL MONEY. 
 
 Exod. xxi. 21. to a slave, — *' He is his master's 
 silver:'' or, as our version has it, "money.'' "By 
 the same word is meant also gold, brass, meat, 
 raiment, or any other thing, as is explained, 
 Lev. XXV. 36, 37. ; Deut. xxiii. 19. ; and as we are 
 elsewhere commanded to lend, Deut. xv. 7, 8 ; 
 Luke vi. 35." * When the Egyptians themselves, 
 after parting with all their silver, had sold their 
 cattle, and, last of all, their lands, to Pharaoh for 
 corn, during the seven years' famine, the rent they 
 paid thenceforth as his servants or tenants was 
 real money, viz., one-fifth of the produce of the 
 land. " Joseph made it a law over the land of 
 Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have 
 the fifth part;"'}" and Orosius says, that in his 
 time they continued to pay corn in the like pro- 
 portion, " according to the ordinance of Joseph." J 
 With the Greeks, previous to the time of Solon, 
 the same description of rent was paid, but not to 
 the same amount : they gave but a sixth of the 
 produce to the owners of the soil. § Among the 
 Romans still less was rendered : — ^"In the ancient 
 state of Rome (says Selden, quoting Appian), the 
 tenants of the empire paid for rent a tenth of their 
 corn." Before the overthrow of Pyrrhus, there 
 was not in Rome any coined silver, nor any gold, 
 
 * Ainsworth on Exodus, xxi. 21. 
 
 f Gen. xlvii. 26. J Orosii Historia, B. I.e. 8. 
 
 § Plutarch's Life of Solon-
 
 X A I L II E O !• K E A J. .MONEY. 13 
 
 as we are informed by Pliny ; and even brass re 
 mained unstamped till the reign of Servius Tul- 
 lius, rough lumps of it passing current by weight, 
 as TinicEus relates. * " How very general the 
 use of this metal was is proved by the armour of 
 the Servian Legion : and there can be no ques- 
 tion that all the better household utensils were 
 of the same material. Thus brass was a thing 
 of dailj/ need, and the masses of it were so easily 
 transformed by fusion, that no loss was incurred 
 by that process. "f The pieces of cloth, and of 
 rock-salt used in Abyssinia, and the cocoa of 
 Mexico, with which M. Niebuhr classes the Ro- 
 man brass, are also examples of I'eal money. 
 
 The early Britons, when they were visited by 
 Caesar, made use only of ?'eal money, which, so 
 far as the metals were concerned, consisted of bars 
 of brass or iron ; and in their free state they never 
 had any other. " It is observable (says Mr. Ru- 
 ding) that those Britons who retired into Wales 
 7jeve?^ struck money during their state of independence 
 upon the monarchs of England ; neither was any 
 money ever coined specially for them, after they 
 were conquered by Edward I." J 
 
 Pec UN I A was anciently employed in the sense 
 of real money : pecuniosus signified a man rich in 
 
 * Pliny, Nat. Hist. B. 33. c. 13. 
 
 t Niebuhr's Roman History. Vol. i. p. 450. Edit. 1831. 
 
 X Annals of the Coinage.
 
 ]4 NATURE OF REAL MONEY. 
 
 cattle.^ Festus observes, " the word joecwwm em- 
 braced not only coined money, but every kind 
 of money, that is to say, all articles luhatso- 
 ever.'"\ That it continued to have this extensive 
 meaning- throughout the middle ages, even to our 
 own times, is proved by numerous instances in 
 Du Cange's Glossary, w\\Q,re flocks and herds, and 
 all kinds of merchandize are represented by the 
 word pecunia. Pecunia viva, live money, occurs 
 in the laws of Edward the Confessor, chap. 10. 
 in those of William the Conqueror, J and in the 
 description given of Domesday Book by Florence 
 of Worcester and Simeon of Durham. § Selden, 
 in his " Review on Tythes," quotes pecmiia as 
 meaning " wealth or estate in lands, as in more 
 ancient times pecunia denoted chiefly estate in 
 cattle, and then money, as it now doth." 
 Capitale vivens, for live stock, " libbendes yrfes" 
 
 * A pecore pecuniosi appellati. Cicero. 
 
 t Pecunia sacrificium fieri ducebant, cum frugurn, fructumque 
 causa mola pura offerabatur in sacrificio, quia omnis res fami- 
 liaris, quam nunc pecuniam dicimus, ex his rebus constaret. 
 Pecuniae verbum, non solum numeratam pecuniam complectitur, 
 verum omnem omnin6 pecuniam, hoc est, omnia corpora. Nam 
 corpora, quoque pecunia appellatione contineri, nemo est quin 
 approbet. Festus. 
 
 X Interdicimus ut nulla pecunia viva vendatur aut ematur, &c. 
 Leg. Gul. i. 
 
 § Gulielmus Rex fecit describi omnem Angliam, quantum 
 terrae quasque baronum suorum possidebat, — quae animalia, 
 immo quantum vivce pecunice possidebat.
 
 NATURE OF REAL MONEY. 15 
 
 in the original, is found in the Latin translation 
 of the laws of Athelstan,* — "I will surrender the 
 tenths of my own property to the service of God, 
 as well of live capital, as of the fruits of the earth," 
 where it stands in opposition to what we call 
 dead stock. Capitale is written captale in the Latin 
 of the laws of Ina quoted by Brompton, where it 
 means cattle. " Catallum (says Du Cange) is the 
 same as capitale, and denotes cattle.'^1[ But the 
 signification of these words extends also to dead 
 stock ; to every kind of goods which a man can 
 possess :J and thus in the old French of the laws 
 of William the Conqueror, chap, iv., it is said, 
 ** Cateu.v sont meubles et immeubles." Partly 
 in this sense we still use the word chattels, though 
 we restrict it, in general, to such dead stock as is 
 moveable. Chattels, therefore, and cattle have 
 one common origin : both are identical with our 
 term capital, and synonymous with pecunia or 
 real money. The Anglo Saxon laws use ceap 
 in the two senses of cattle and chattels,^ which 
 word, though now obsolete, retains its meaning 
 
 * " Reddam de meo proprio decimas Deo, tam in vivente ca- 
 pitali, quam in mortuis fructibus terrce." Ubi vivens capitale 
 idem est quod viva pecunia in Legibus Gul, i. Du Cange. 
 
 t Catallum — idem quod capitale. Bona omnia quae in 
 pecudibus sunt. Ex capitale enim formata vox captale ; et ex 
 captale, catallum, — Gallico, chatel et catel. 
 
 I " Dicitur honum omne quod possidetur, praesertim vero 
 bonorum species illae, quae in pecudibus consistit." Du Cange : 
 Capitale. 
 
 § Leges Inae, c. 40, 48.
 
 16 NATURE OF REAL MONEY. 
 
 in the term chapman, a dealer in live or dead 
 stock. Stock, it is almost unnecessary to add, 
 denotes accumulation, and is applicable to what- 
 ever, being superfluous to our current wants, is 
 capable of being stored up for future occasions. 
 
 It will strike every one that Great Britain, at 
 this instant, abounds with real money, to a greater 
 degree, probably, than was ever known before. 
 We have a greater extent of arable and pasture 
 land than our forefathers had. It is true that, 
 from the check which agriculture has received, 
 much of our poorer soil produces now, on the 
 average, not more than half, and of the better 
 kind scarcely two-thirds, what it did during the 
 war, but still there is a great deal of capital em- 
 ployed in what is called management ; and almost 
 every description of live and dead stock is not 
 only increased in quantity, compared to what it 
 formerly was, but is also of superior quality. 
 
 The warehouses of our tradesmen, manufac- 
 turers, and merchants, groan beneath the im- 
 mense loads of real money which is contained in 
 them. By the improvements made in machinery 
 we can increase our wealth of this kind at plea- 
 sure ; and almost without hyperbole it may be 
 said, we can produce, in linen, cotton, woollen, 
 and silk goods, enough to supply the whole world 
 with clothing. Our artisans and labourers are 
 the most steady and industrious people in exist- 
 ence, and work more hours in the day, and to 
 far greater effect, than those of any other na-
 
 \ A V r U I . () 1 l{ !■ A I. .M O \ K V . 17 
 
 tion ; tlieir labour, their ingenuity, their time is 
 7'eal money, as we perceive every instant, in 
 the multitude of wonderful productions which 
 issue from them. But are we, at this moment, 
 in the condition of a rich people ? Are all classes 
 as easy in their circumstances as their store of 
 real money entitles them to be ? If not, to what 
 cause is it owing, that with all this positive wealth, 
 we are still comparatively poor ? 
 
 I am right in assuming that the distress cannot 
 proceed from a dejiciejici/ of real money ; for the 
 higher classes cannot possibly be in want of those 
 necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, 
 which their station and their property enables 
 them to command ; nor can the middle classes be 
 really poor, surrounded and even incumbered as 
 they are with a multitude of goods : the lower 
 classes may certainly feel distress, because there 
 is no market to which they can take their labour 
 and skill, which is their real money ; but this is 
 a circumstance which proves that their exertions 
 have been too great, that their productions are 
 superabundant. If, therefore, they cannot receive 
 sufficient for their subsistence and clothing in the 
 present state of things, their misery must be at- 
 tributed not to a deficiency, but to an excess of 
 those articles which they need, but which, unfor- 
 tunately for them, they cannot partake of, though 
 they have caused the superfluity. 
 
 That superabundance is the cause of our dis- 
 tress, is with some a favourite doctrine ; and as 
 
 c
 
 18 NATURE OF REAL MONEY. 
 
 the middle and higher ranks complain of an in- 
 convenience in their affairs, which it is clear cannot 
 arise from any actual deficiency in the country of 
 those things which are requisite for the supply of 
 all their wants, — it is by many thought that all the 
 inconvenience or distress which is felt, is in fact 
 occasioned by overproduction, by too great a quan- 
 tity of 7^eal wealth. 
 
 But how impossible it is for this to be the case, 
 a moment's reflection must convince the most in- 
 credulous. The farmer is distressed to pay his 
 rent, and to buy colonial produce and manufac- 
 tured goods, while he is overstocked with cattle 
 and corn : he is eminently pecuniosus, abounding 
 with money, yet he cannot pay his way. But if his 
 landlord would take his rent in 7'eal money, such 
 as cattle and co7^n, he would not be an hour in his 
 debt. The landlord, deficient in his annual in- 
 come, cannot buy the articles which he has been 
 accustomed to use, though he is undoubtedly a 
 man of pr^operty. But if the tradesman and the 
 merchant would take from him that real money, 
 which his tenants could give him, what then 
 would prevent him from making all the purchases 
 he could wish. The tradesman and merchant find 
 it very difficult to support themselves by the busi- 
 ness they transact, though their warehouses are 
 full of real money, which " not enriches" them, 
 however wealthy they may feel they ought to be ; 
 but if they were to exchange their respective com- 
 modities with each other, trade would flourish,
 
 NATL' RE OF REAL MOXEV. 19 
 
 and every demand would be satisfied. What 
 does the poor man want ? food and clothing. Set 
 him to work, to supply the market with new pro- 
 ductions as fast as the old are taken off; pay him 
 to his heart's content with real money, and you 
 give him both food and clothing. Thus all classes 
 would be relieved. 
 
 But the cry is repeated : machinery is so pro- 
 digiously increased, in quantity and power, that 
 it is overwhelming us with the abundance of manu- 
 factured 2:oods which it turns out! So much the 
 better ; the nation, nay the world, is so much 
 the richer, and every individual may obtain, in 
 return for his own personal exertions, a greater 
 share of those articles which contribute to health, 
 cleanliness, and comfort. If ten suits of clothes 
 could be had in return for that labour which now 
 is equivalent to one, the poor man would have 
 great reason to be thankful, and the rich man 
 would have nothing to complain of — let him give 
 his wealth for something else, if he does not want 
 more clothes. If shirts and stockings were as 
 " plenty as blackberries," who would grieve ? — 
 not the poor man, for he could then get them al- 
 most without labour, and might employ his spare 
 hours in procuring something else. If bread, ale, 
 and wine were as common as stones and water, 
 how are we ruined ? — why should we repine ? 
 Let every man have those as freely as God has 
 granted him these, and the world will even then 
 have no reason to complain of over-production. 
 
 c 2
 
 20 NATURE OF REAL MONEY. 
 
 The Romans conceived that a man possessed of 
 great abundance was worthy of being compared 
 with a God, and hence they called him Dives * 
 The Saxons thought his condition that of a King, 
 and hence they styled him Rich. | But no such 
 epithets now attach to many of those persons 
 whose wealth is undeniable. If the " greatest of 
 all the men of the East" J lived here at this time, 
 in possession of the 14,000 sheep, and 2000 oxen, 
 which he had in the days of his restoration to 
 prosperity, § he would be in reality a poor man, 
 except for the ear-rings of gold which his ac- 
 quaintance had given him ; and of these he would 
 be soon stripped by the collectors of the king's 
 taxes, and the poor-rates. 
 
 It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the dis- 
 tress, which confessedly exists, is attributable 
 either to a deficiency, or to an e.rcess, of any or of 
 all those things which constitute real money. The 
 next question is, Can it be caused by any circum- 
 stances connected with symbolic money ? 
 
 * From Divus. t From Rex. 
 
 I Job, i. 3. § Jobjxlii. 12.
 
 21 
 
 CHAPTER 111. 
 
 NATURE OF SYMBOLIC MONEY. 
 
 Symbolic money is a tokeji of value received, 
 which acquits the holder of an obligation to pay a 
 certain quantity of real money, represented by 
 that token. 
 
 Symbolic money had its origin in civil govern- 
 ment, but it sprung more especially from those 
 governments which were founded on conquest. 
 Its essence consists in represe?itative value. 
 
 Any worthless material, on which it is possible 
 for the authorized party to inscribe a given sum, 
 may be made use of for symbolic money ; and the 
 same material may be made to represent, under 
 such circumstances, any value, however large or 
 small ; precisely in the same manner as a shred of 
 paper, previously worthless, may, under the proper 
 stamp and signature, be made a receipt, which 
 shall acquit the holder of any sum, whether large 
 or small, that may be written upon it. 
 
 That this is the true characteristic of symbolic 
 money, and that it is not necessary for it to pos- 
 sess intrinsic value, will be apparent if we consider 
 its operation in the following case.
 
 22 NATURE OF SYJVIBOLIC MONEY. 
 
 Suppose all our present wealth to be swept 
 away, and not a vestige left of either sovereigns 
 or bank notes ; yet that the necessities of the state 
 are as great as ever, and that it is incumbent on 
 the government to provide for an expenditure of 
 fifty millions per annum, out of an empty Ex- 
 chequer. Let a sufficient quantity of Bank of 
 England notes be made ready ; or, abandoning all 
 connection with the Bank, let Government pre- 
 pare Exchequer bills to the following purport : — 
 
 No, £ONE. 
 
 By an Act, 3 William IV. for raising £50,000,000 by Exchequer 
 Bills for the service of the year 1832. 
 This Bill is to be current, and pass for ONE POUND in any 
 of the public revenues, aids, taxes, or supplies, or at the receipt 
 of Exchequer at Westminster. — Dated at the Exchequer, the 5th 
 day of April, 1833. 
 
 (Bm 33ountJ. 
 
 Let similar bills be filled up for 51. 10 1. 20/. 50/. 
 100/. and upward. Let these bills to the amount of 
 30 millions a year, be issued in payment of the 
 dividends, due on account of the national debt ; let 
 the remaining 20 millions be employed in provid- 
 ing stores, paying salaries, &c. : and at the same 
 time let taxes be levied, as at present, which shall 
 bring back the whole of the fifty millions, by 
 quarterly instalments, into the Exchequer in the 
 course of the year. No inconvenience could the 
 country feel from these bills not possessing intrinsic 
 value : no loss could the government sustain by
 
 NATLKE OF SV.\tliOLlC MONEY. 23 
 
 their possessing only representative value. Every 
 man in the kingdom would willingly give his own 
 jx'al money to become possessed of as many of 
 them as his share of the taxes would, require — 
 some, for instance, 1/, others 5/, 50/, 100/, or 1000/, 
 averaging throughout Great Britain about 2/. 10.9. 
 each person. The bills would be collected and 
 returned into the Exchequer at proper intervals, 
 through the appointed channels, after having dis- 
 charged their function ; and to supply their place, 
 a fresh issue, to the same amount, would com- 
 mence as soon as the first issue was beginning to 
 be withdrawn ; so that the supply of bills through- 
 out the year would never greatly vary, being, 
 at all times, neither more nor less than is sufficient 
 to represent the amount of taxes annually levied. 
 
 It is therefore unnecessary that symbolic money 
 should possess intrinsic value, since these bills 
 would discharge their representative duty most 
 perfectly without it. But lest any one should 
 think that an injurious innovation on the ancient 
 system is recommended when it is proposed to 
 issue bills of this description, I would observe, 
 that from the first establishment of the Court of 
 Exchequer in this country, it has been customary 
 to make use of a worthless material to represent 
 the largest sums, and that what is proper in the 
 more important, cannot be injurious in the minor 
 case. Under our Norman line of kings, tallies of 
 ivood were issued, by virtue of which, the holder 
 was entitled to receive from the Crown the value
 
 24 NATURE OF SYMBOLIC MONEY. 
 
 inscribed thereon : if his claim was satisfied by ano- 
 ther, the tally was surrendered to that person, who 
 might sell it in like manner to a third, and so 
 on, till the last holder pleaded it in the Exche- 
 quer, as an acquittance of debt to the Crown to 
 its nominal amount. This tally was one half of a 
 four-sided rod or staff, on which, in its entire 
 state, the sum it purported to represent was carved 
 in transverse notches, varying in width for thou- 
 sands, hundreds, scores, pounds, shillings, and 
 pence: 1000/. was represented by a notch as 
 broad as the palm of the hand; 100/. by one the 
 breadth of a thumb ; 20/. by the thickness of the 
 little finger; 1/. by that of a barley-corn; for a 
 shilling, the least piece possible was cut out ; a 
 penny was marked merely by an incision, no wood 
 being taken away. These signs were for the un- 
 learned. For others, as well as to guard against 
 frauds, the sum was ivritten in ink, on two opposite 
 sides of the staff, the notched side not being one; 
 and finally, with a knife and mallet the staff was 
 cleft in two, lengthwise : one part, called the tally, 
 or staff, or check, bearing one inscription and half 
 the notches, being given to the person for whose 
 service it was intended ; the other, called the 
 counter-tally, being laid up in a safe place, until its 
 tally should be brought in by the person who had 
 last given value for it.* 
 
 * See Dialogus de Scaccario, written by the King's Trea- 
 surer, Richard Fitz-Nigel, Bishop of London, in the 23d
 
 NATURE OF SYMBOLIC MONEV. 25 
 
 I have been the more particular in describing 
 this instrument, with the process by which it was 
 formed, and the usages connected with it, because 
 it is in all respects a preccdait for the course I pro- 
 pose, and consistent with the existing practice of 
 the Exchequer. We have laid aside the cumbrous 
 rod of wood, but in the Exchequer bills and Bank 
 of England bills, which form the larger part of our 
 symbolic money, we preserve the name, as in paper 
 we rival for cheapness the material of the ancient 
 tally. Billc in Norman French means a baton or 
 staff* and its diminutive billet still retains the sig- 
 nification of a short piece of wood. When officers 
 now are said to be on the staff, it is because they 
 are retained in pay by the Crown, which, in earlier 
 times, provided for their maintenance by charging 
 upon a stipes or staff, issued from the Exchequer, 
 a certain sum sufficient for that purpose. A sol- 
 dier's billet more plainly betrays its origin, though 
 now made of paper : it was granted to such men 
 as were actually employed in the service of the 
 state, or were retained on duty at the expense 
 of the Crown. And herein both officers and men, 
 as receiving a stipoid (from stipes), were contradis- 
 tinguished from those noblemen and gentlemen 
 who attended the wars at their own cost, and from 
 those numerous troops of vassals whom they armed 
 
 year of Henry II. and printed at the end of Madox's History of 
 the Exchequer. 
 
 * Roquefort, Diet. Langue Romane.
 
 26 NATURE OF SYMBOLIC MONEY. 
 
 and clothed, brought into the field, and supported 
 there, at their own charge. When we give a check 
 upon a banker, we keep the part answering to the 
 counter-tally in our own hands, and indent the 
 check by irregularly cutting or tearing it off, that 
 on joining the two parts together we may see 
 whether they tally, and thus detect a false check, 
 if a fraud has been attempted. We pay the tax- 
 collector an Exchequer bill, or Bank of England 
 bill to the amount of his claim, for which bill we 
 have given part of our property. He gives us a 
 receipt, and acquits us of the debt by paying the 
 bill into the Exchequer. So, formerly, " when 
 the sheriff came to accompt, he was to make pro- 
 clamation in his county, that all who had tallies of 
 the Exchequer, touching things within his ac- 
 compt, might come forth and obtain allowance 
 thereupon ; . . . . and when a sheriff or other officer, 
 having the summons or process of the Exchequer, 
 had levied or received the debt due from any 
 person to the king, such sheriff" or officer was, by 
 the statutes and custom of the Exchequer, to give 
 such debtor an acquittance or tally of discharge, and 
 afterwards to acquit the debtor of such debt at 
 the king's Exchequer."* Sometimes the sheriff 
 or receiver was a rogue, as collectors and receivers 
 of taxes in later periods have sometimes been ; on 
 which occasion we produce our receipts, and shew 
 that we have paid the money. " In the 27th of 
 
 * Madox's History of the Exchequer, c. 23. % 13, 14.
 
 NATUKE OK SYMBOLIC MONEY. 27 
 
 Edward I. a proclamation issued into Yorkshire, 
 reciting that divers persons of that county com- 
 plained to the king, that the sheriff distrained them 
 for divers debts due to the king, which they had 
 paid to former sheriffs, as appeared by tallies of 
 payment given them by such sheriffs, and com- 
 manded that outcry be made. That all men of the 
 East Riding, having tallies of payment made to 
 them by any sheriff during the present king's reign, 
 of debts whereof they are not discharged, should 
 bring or send their tallies to the Exchequer at 
 York, at the close of Easter, so that the sheriffs 
 and their receivers might be sent for to come and 
 discharge such persons, whilst the Exchequer con- 
 tinued in this county. And for sparing men's 
 charges, it was directed, that one or two of the 
 East Riding might be attorneys to bring the tallies 
 for all the rest."* If in these cases we substitute 
 Bank bills, or Exchequer bills, for Exchequer 
 tallies ; and compare the collector's receipts on 
 paper with the sheriff's tallies of payment or dis- 
 charge, we shall find that the processes are 
 throughout identical. But there is one difference 
 between Bank bills and ancient tallies, which 
 should not be overlooked, and therefore I mention 
 it here, though it may hereafter be noticed more 
 fully ; viz. That the Bank is compelled to give a 
 certain quantity of ^'o/^, in exchange for its bill, on 
 demand ; whereas the ancient tally, like the mo- 
 
 * Madox, C.23. § 13.
 
 28 NATURE OF SYMBOLIC MONEY. 
 
 dern Exchequer bill, was issued by the Crown with 
 the hazard of no such liability : indeed it would 
 have been worse than useless to have given it 
 existence with a condition like that attached to it, 
 for when tallies were invented, of silver coin there 
 was but little, and of gold none, so that the coined 
 money of the country bore no proportion to the 
 demands of the Exchequer. On this account, the 
 true representative of the ancient tally is not the 
 one pound bill convertible into a sovereign on demand, 
 but a nominal one pound bill, such as we have sup- 
 posed to exist, for which no one is bound to give at 
 all times a certain quantity of gold, but which the 
 Exchequer will receive as one pound in payment 
 of taxes for this good and sufficient reason, that the 
 government had previously derived that value in 
 some way or other from the issuing of it. 
 
 Reverting now to the cause of the general dis- 
 tress, let us inquire whether it is created by any cir- 
 cumstances connected with symbolic money. The 
 question is not altogether of a speculative nature : 
 we have had experience to help us to decide it. 
 During the war we had heavier taxes than at 
 present to bear, but we had also Bank bills, incon- 
 vertible into gold at a fixed price, constituting 
 therefore such symbolic money as that which has 
 been proposed. Throughout that period the bur- 
 thens of the state were not felt to be particularly 
 grievous ; but it must be recollected, that for 
 nearly the whole time we had paper money in as 
 great abundance as our necessities required. The
 
 XATURE OF SYMIJOI.IC MONEV. 29 
 
 inference, therefore, is favourable to the supposi- 
 tion, that distress is not caused by the use of sym- 
 bolic money. Is it attributable to the ivaiit of it? 
 Here again we have experience for our guide. 
 Since the peace, paper money to a very large 
 amount has been annihilated ; and though taxes 
 have also been reduced, the general impression 
 throughout the country seems to be, that those which 
 remain are too heavy to be borne : but now, we 
 have no Bank bills niconvertiblc into gold at a fixed 
 rate, consequently, jw symbolic money ; the want of 
 such money therefore may have produced the dis- 
 tress. But let us suppose it restored, and that 
 instead of twenty-five millions of Bank bills con- 
 vertible into gold at a fixed rate, we had fifty mil- 
 lions circulating through the country, — exchange- 
 able of course into gold as well as into any other 
 kind of real money, but not at a fixed rate, and 
 receivable at the Exchequer for fifty millions of 
 taxes : can any one imagine that this would not 
 relieve the distress ? can any one doubt whether it 
 would not instantly remove it ? With as much 
 money in circulation as the necessities of the 
 country could require, — and that quantity not 
 subject to fluctuation in its supply, — confidence 
 would be restored, private enterprise would be 
 encouraged, public works would be undertaken 
 labour would be everywhere excited and rewarded, 
 — taxes would be freely paid — the national debt 
 in a state of rapid liquidation — and the whole 
 kingdom busy and prosperous. I am justified.
 
 30 NATURE OF SYMBOLIC MONEY. 
 
 therefore, on these considerations, in concluding 
 that the present distress of the country is caused 
 by the ahstnce of symbolic money. 
 
 But admitting this to be true, it may be asked, 
 how shall these Exchequer bills be introduced, 
 seeing that by our present currency the wants 
 of the state are regularly supplied? The collec- 
 tors of the revenue are constantly bringing in at 
 present gold and bank notes, which have been re- 
 ceived for the customs, excise, and other taxes : is 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have 50 millions 
 of new money, as well as 50 millions of the old ? 
 — Certainly : But instead of paying this old money 
 away again on account of salaries, dividends, the 
 supply of stores, &c., let Government discharge 
 with it, first, the debt due to the Bank of Eng- 
 land ; secondly, the unfunded debt represented 
 by Exchequer bills bearing interest ; thirdly, as 
 much of the national debt as the remainder of 
 the 50 millions will redeem. Let the old money 
 be thus appropriated, and in lieu of it, let Govern- 
 ment issue its new Exchequer bills for the purposes 
 above-mentioned : viz. the payment of salaries, 
 dividends, stores, &c. By so doing it will speedily 
 cause the return of prosperity; for the Bank, 
 having its capital liberated, will discount without 
 fear good commercial bills, employing for that 
 purpose its own notes, which will be payable in 
 gold or in these Exchequer bills, now made a legal 
 tender. By the diminution of the national debt, 
 money will be rendered generally abundant among
 
 NATURE OF SYMBOLIC MONKY. 31 
 
 all classes and in all parts of the country. The 
 borrower will derive great advantage from this ; 
 but to the lender, also, much good will accrue, 
 in the comparative security with which he may 
 thenceforth entrust his money to honest and m- 
 dustrious persons, who will run little risk in their 
 trade, as ready money will be paid for most things. 
 Lastly, the state will derive immense advantage in 
 the saving effected by the employment of fifty 
 millions of symbolic money, for which no interest 
 is payable ; and thus all parties will have reason to 
 be satisfied.
 
 32 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 Though real and symbolic money properly con- 
 stitute all the forms in which mo7iey subsists ; yet 
 there is a mixed state or condition in which it is 
 also found, and one by which it is so generally 
 recognized, that many persons conceive it to have 
 no existence under any other. This state is that of 
 coin. Coin is symbolic money when it passes for 
 more than its intrinsic value, in the degree by 
 which it exceeds that value ; and real money, like 
 all other things, when it does not exceed it. 
 
 Coin is an article of great antiquity and import- 
 ance ; but in all ages and countries its origin has 
 been taxation. Like symbolic monej it is an instru- 
 ment of taxation, and a token of receipt ; but with 
 this wide difference between them, that coin has 
 some intrinsic value. 
 
 As an instrument of taxation, and a token of 
 receipt, its usefulness may be readily conceived. 
 The earliest taxes levied were those on articles of 
 import and export, the produce of which was ap- 
 plied to the service of the state. A daily supply
 
 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 33 
 
 of food for the king's table was also necessary, 
 which, if not obtained from farms set apart for 
 that purpose, must be provided by some other 
 means. From these slight premises, we shall see 
 how effective coin would become in distributing 
 to each individual his proper share of the public 
 burthens. 
 
 Import cannot exist without export, and the ex- 
 change must be beneficial to the merchant, or he 
 would not carry it on. By seeking his own ad- 
 vantage he adds to the comforts of all classes of 
 the community. Of these comforts the king- 
 ought to partake ; but he has duties to attend to, 
 which preclude him from engaging in traffic : it is 
 but reasonable, therefore, that his wants should be 
 supplied by others. Accordingly, a small portion 
 was wont to be cut off for the king's use, from 
 certain articles of traffic of superior necessity : or 
 as this was not always a satisfactory or even in 
 some cases a possible operation, tokens of receipt 
 were struck and given to the king's officers, with 
 which they bought such commodities as were 
 wanted for the use of the monarch, and these 
 tokens were afterwards returned to the crown by 
 a tax on the goods imported or exported. It was 
 an object therefore with the merchants, to pro- 
 vide themselves with a sufficient number of these 
 tokens, by giving value for them ; and on the 
 landing of the boat, to make the best terms they 
 could with what we should call the custom-house 
 officers. As the levying of this tax was a matter 
 
 D
 
 34 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 of universal practice, the word corisuetudo, or custom ^ 
 was its natural designation ; and inasmuch as the 
 cutting -off was a very common operation, which did 
 not stop here, but in course of time extended itself 
 to almost every thing that could be cut away, we 
 came to have the word e.vcise introduced, also tal- 
 lage, a process as much disliked in its day, as the 
 excise is now, A customer* is at present one 
 who in return for real money gives you that which 
 is symbolic: he takes away your property, and 
 gives you the kings token of receipt, which, in 
 due time the latter will reclaim. The notion of 
 loss or damage being sustained on parting with 
 goods for coin, has given rise to an expression still 
 common in many parts of this country. What is 
 the damage ? meaning. What does it cost ?f 
 
 As an instrument of ta.vation, the character of 
 coin is distinctly recognized in that passage of our 
 Saviour's life, where, on entering Capernaum, he 
 tells Peter to pay the tribute, by casting his hook 
 into the sea for a fish, in whose mouth he would 
 find the proper piece of money ; adding, " That 
 
 * Custumarius: publicanus, qui tributa exigit. — Du Cange. 
 
 t We owe our acquaintance with cost, as well as with custom, 
 to the Romans, who were without doubt the first who introduced 
 taxation with all its consequences into Britain. Though the old 
 French have const, the Spaniards, casta, the Italians, casta, and 
 the Cambro-Britons, cast, of which last language both Du Cange 
 and Davies conceive it to be a primitive term, the origin of all is 
 evidently the Latin canstare, softened by the Normans into con- 
 st are, to COST : quantum tibi constat ? as we also say, how much 
 does it stand you in ?
 
 TAXATION THF. UKKilN OF COIN. 35 
 
 take, and give unto them for thee and me. '* Here, 
 by a miracle, that which was real money (the fish) 
 produced that which was also symbolic ; but the 
 same effect naturally follows, when any one sells 
 his goods for that coin which he must give again 
 to the tax-gatherer. Our Saviour says, on another 
 occasion, when the Pharisees, " seeking to entan- 
 gle him," asked whether it were lawful to give 
 tribute unto Caesar? '* Shew me the tribute money. 
 And they brought unto him a penny. And he 
 saith unto them, Whose is this image and super- 
 scription ? They say unto him, Caesar's. Then 
 saith he unto them. Render therefore unto Caesar 
 the t/iifios that are Caesar s, and unto God the 
 things that are God's. "f Some would suppose, 
 that the coin was no longer Caesar's, after it had 
 passed from the treasury, but the absolute pro- 
 perty of him who happened to possess it ; and so 
 it would have been, had it been real money only, 
 — silver, for instance, valued by iveight ; but with 
 the stamp of Caesar it was partly symbolic money, 
 an instrument of taxation which had only half ful- 
 filled its function, and as such, liable to be re- 
 called into the treasury without equivalent, when- 
 ever the tax-gatherer should apply for it. The 
 coin therefore was lawfully his whose image and 
 superscription it bore ; and in due time it would 
 not fail to be rendered unto Caesar, that is, ?f- 
 turnedio him. 
 
 * Matt. xvii. 27. t Matt, xxiii. 19. 
 
 J) 2
 
 36 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 The utility of coin, in equalizing among all peo- 
 ple the charge of supplying the king with such 
 articles as his own farms did not produce, will be 
 readily comprehended. A. cultivates land in the 
 immediate vicinity of the court, and thus it is more 
 convenient for him to furnish corn, than for B. who 
 lives at a considerable distance; but A. and B. 
 with numberless others, many of whom are not 
 engaged in agriculture at all, are equally bound 
 to administer to the king's necessities. Coin, as a 
 token of receipt, affords the means of accommo- 
 dating all parties. In return for a certain quantity 
 of corn received from A, the proper officer gives 
 him a certain number of these tokens of receipt, 
 which B. and all the rest must again buy of A. ; 
 otherwise, at the proper period, when the tax-ga- 
 therer comes round to collect, from each of them, 
 one or more of these tokens of receipt, as proofs 
 of their having paid their share, they will not be 
 able to produce them, and consequently their pro- 
 perty must be seized or sold, to yield the sum re- 
 quired. When this became understood, coin would 
 soon be circulated through the country ; and by 
 its intervention, no man would have reason to think, 
 that in contributing to the necessities of the state, 
 he fared worse than his neighbours. 
 
 We have a brief but striking confirmation of the 
 view here taken of the origin of coin, in the Dialo- 
 gus de Scaccario, before referred to. The author, 
 who had peculiar opportunities of knowing the 
 truth, and who lived very near the period to which
 
 TAXATION THE ORIGIN ON COIN. 37 
 
 he refers, says, he had been told by those who 
 preceded him, " That in the primitive state of this 
 kingdom after the conquest, the king was not fur- 
 nished with a certain quantity of gold or silver, but 
 with victuals ofili/ from his ovvn farms, by means of 
 which, the daily wants of his household were sup- 
 plied ; and, that they who were deputed to attend 
 to these things knew how much each farm contri- 
 buted. Afterwards, for pay or gratuities to the 
 soldiers, and for other necessary uses, a revenue 
 was obtained by fines, or benevolences, from those 
 cities, towns, and fortified places, which did not 
 practise agriculture ; and then coined money sprung 
 up. Things continued in this state throughout the 
 whole reign of William I. and down to that of his 
 son Henry ; so that I myself (says our author), 
 have seen the men whose duty it was to take care 
 that victuals were brought to court at appointed 
 times, from the king's farms ; and certain it is, 
 that officers of the king's household took cogni- 
 zance of the several counties from which corn and 
 different sorts of meat, and hay and corn for horses, 
 and other necessaries were receivable. Now, that 
 these articles should be supplied according to the 
 appointed measure, the king's officers reckoned 
 with the sheriff (the person who had charge of the 
 county), estimating their value at a sum in pennies. 
 A measure of wheat for instance, equal to bread 
 for 100 men, was valued at one shilling ; the car- 
 case of a feeding ox, at one shillings a ram, or a 
 ewe, four-pence; provender for twenty horses.
 
 38 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 four-pence. But at a later period, when the last- 
 mentioned king (Hen. I.) took measures to allay 
 insurrections in distant and foreign parts, it then 
 became necessary that he should raise a sum in 
 coined money equal to his expenses. When this 
 was done, a vast number of husbandmen assem- 
 bled at the palace ; others, to make a deeper im- 
 pression, threw themselves on all occasions in his 
 way ; they complained, and held up their plough- 
 shares, in token of ruined agriculture : for they 
 were weighed down with numberless distresses, 
 in consequence of their whole year's provision 
 having been, in most parts of the kingdom, car- 
 ried off. Thereupon the king, listening to their 
 complaints, with the express advice of his great 
 men appointed certain persons, whom he knew to 
 be of good judgment and experience in such a 
 work, to go through the kingdom, and to examine 
 with their own eyes every farm ; and when they 
 had reckoned the supplies which it was accustomed 
 to furnish, to denote the same by a sum of money. 
 This being done, for the sum total arising from all 
 the farms in one county they held the sheriff re- 
 sponsible ; enjoining further, that he should pay 
 it by scale, that is, to every pound by tale, six 
 pennies should be added as a make-weight, be- 
 cause it was perceived that the money would 
 become lighter by use."* Our author goes on to 
 observe, that the payment as to scale being found 
 
 * Madox : Dialogus, &c.
 
 TAXATION THE OlilUlN Ol- COIN. 39 
 
 insufficient to compensate the real loss from attri- 
 tion, it was next ordered, that the money should be 
 taken by weight; but even this check was not 
 strict enough to satisfy the watchful soul of Roger, 
 Bishop of Salisbury, Chief Justicier, and Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer, in the reign of Henry I. 
 Ever intent on providing for the interests of the 
 king, " and of the public /" he saw that the coiners 
 of the money, which was silver, sometimes mixed 
 copper or brass with it ; so, to guard the revenue 
 from suH'ering by their fraud, he ordered the coin 
 when brought in to be melted and assayed, and then 
 estimated by weight ; thus throwing the whole loss 
 upon the innocent people, who could not help 
 themselves, for no other coin than this was to be had. 
 We have here the account which Richard Fitz- 
 Nigel, Bishop of London, and Treasurer of the 
 Exchequer from the 30th of Hen. II. to .the 7th 
 of Richard I., gives of the origin of coin under the 
 Norman line. This however was not its first in- 
 troduction into England : the Anglo Saxons and 
 Danes had also their pemiy, with which the denier 
 or penny of the Normans was intended to corre- 
 spond both in weight and purity. It is probable 
 that at that earlier time the king's supplies were 
 with few exceptions drawn from his own farms ; 
 indeed, we find in the laws of Canute express 
 command given, that such should be the case, 
 and that no one should be compelled to assist 
 the king with any articles of provision;* but it 
 
 * Lambarde, Leijes Canuti, cap. 67.
 
 40 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 must be confessed, that the clause shews there 
 had been times when this humane and reasonable 
 conduct was not pursued. 
 
 The revenue of the Saxon monarchs was de- 
 rived chiefly from pecuniary fines or mulcts, im- 
 posed for various offences. Almost every species 
 of crime had a specific sum attached to it, on 
 payment of which satisfaction was considered to 
 be made. In the laws of Athelstan, the murder 
 of a king was commutable for 30,000 thrymsas, 
 whereof 15,000 belonged to the nation as com- 
 pensation for his death, 15,000 to his kindred as 
 the value of his head. The head of an arch- 
 bishop or earl w^as valued at 15,000 ; of a bishop 
 or alderman, at 8000 ; of a general or high sheriff, 
 at 4000 ; of a spiritual thane (a priest), or a tem- 
 poral thane, at 2000 ; of a churl or farmer, at 267 
 (if a Dane). The head of a Briton, if he had 
 land and paid a yearly rent to the king, was 
 valued at 120*. ; if he had only half a hide of land, 
 at 80.S. ; if he had no land, but was a freeman, at 
 70*. If a churl possessed five hides of land, his 
 head was worth 2000 thrymsas. Among the 
 Mercians, a churl's head was valued at 200*. a 
 thane's at 1200*. — This code of compensation was 
 too merciful for the Danes, on whose practice the 
 Normans improved, as we on that of the Normans. 
 In the laws of Canute some oflfences were speci- 
 fied, for which no bote or satisfaction could be 
 made by any penalty. " The breaking into and 
 burning of houses, and open theft, and manifest
 
 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 41 
 
 murders, and the betrayal of a man's lord, are 
 remediless by human law."* The head (or life) of 
 the offender was to pay the forfeit of these crimes, 
 which from that circumstance were called capital 
 offences. 
 
 The principal coin of the Saxons, if they had 
 any of their own issuing before the arrival in this 
 country of Augustine and his brother missionaries 
 from Rome, was the sceat, a silver coin. As it 
 denotes a pai^t or portion, it may be understood to 
 represent those forfeitures or mulcts which were 
 intended to be, and in effect were, certain portions 
 of property taken from the real money of the de- 
 linquents, and transferred to the king, of which 
 transfer the sceat was the symbol. The name has 
 descended to our own times in the words scot, 
 and lot,-\ which mean the king's taxes, and burgage 
 or leet money ; also in shot, a reckoning at an inn. 
 
 After the conversion of the Saxon kings, the 
 penny made its appearance, a coin not only larger 
 and handsomer than the sceat, but exhibiting in 
 its impress the emblems of Christianity. The 
 name of the penny first occurs in the laws of Ina, J 
 king of the West Saxons from 688 to 726, wherein 
 
 * Hus brec and baernet, and open thyfth, and seberemorth, 
 and hlaford swice, aefter weoruld laga is botleas. Lambarde, 
 Leges Canuti, cap. 61. 
 
 t " Et omnis Francigena qui tempore Edwardi propinqui nostri 
 fuil in Anglia, particeps consuetudinum Anglorum, quod dicunt 
 ane hlote, et an scote, persolvatur secundum legem Anglorum." 
 — Leges Gul. I. 
 
 t See Lambard : Leges Inae.
 
 42 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 the fines are expressed by shillings and pennies, 
 but the shilUng was, at this period, only a certain 
 number of pennies, and not a real coin. — So 
 short a time previously as in the reign of Ethel- 
 bert, king of Kent, the first Christian convert, 
 the fines were expressed by shillings and sceats. 
 Ethelbert died in 616: the pemiy therefore was 
 issued in the interval, and probably under the 
 influence of the Romish church ; for Ina, we are 
 told, was the first king who granted the tax called 
 Romescot, or Peter's penny, for its benefit. This 
 tax was confirmed by Ofta, king of Mercia from 
 758 to 796, whose pennies are so various in their 
 type, and all of such extraordinary execution, 
 that they are said to have been " without parallel 
 in the money of this island, from the time of Cu- 
 nobeline to the reign of Henry VII." and to have 
 induced the belief that they were the workmanship 
 of Italian artists.* Under the circumstances of 
 this apparent connection of the coin with Romish 
 men and Romish interests, we may be allowed to 
 conjecture that the name is also of Roman origin ; 
 deriving it from poena, punishment ; Trotvrj, compen- 
 sation for shedding blood. With the Romans poena 
 was considered synonymous with mulcta: "When 
 the magistrate has sat in judgment or made inquest, 
 let the determination of the mulct or Jine be with 
 the people."! Penjiy, therefore, may mean dijine or 
 
 * Ruding, i. 235. 
 
 f Cum raagistratus judicassit, inrogassitve ; per populum 
 multce, poenee, certatio esto. Cic. de Leg. iii. 3.
 
 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 43 
 
 punishment ; but though it is thus connected with 
 the Latin /)d?«fl, I am inclined to think it has rather 
 the sense of pcenitere; and that the Veiex's-penny 
 was not so much di penal as a penitential offering :* 
 The conversion of the Saxon kings to Christianity, 
 occurring as it did in connection with the new 
 coin, the neiu name, and the new tax, materially 
 strengthens this conjecture respecting the long- 
 disputed origin of the penny. 
 
 The English had their share of these mulcts 
 under the Saxons. They paid Rome-sceat to the 
 pope, on St. Peter's day ; Churc/i-sceat or ^rst fruits, 
 to the church at Martinmass ; Soiil-sceat, on a grave 
 being dug, not the less payable in a man's own 
 parish though he should die and be buried in an- 
 other ; Lightsceat on Easter-day, All Saints' day, 
 and the day of Purification, a half-pennyworth of 
 wax each time, for every hide of land ; Plough-alms 
 at Easter; the Tithe of the increase oi Livestock at 
 Whitsuntide, and of the Fruits of the earth on All 
 Saints' day. When to these, which belong to the 
 Church, are added those taxes which the Reeve 
 claimed — the King's reeve, the Shire reeve, or 
 sheriff, and the Borough reeve — above all that 
 most productive tax called Danegelt, or Dane 
 money — we shall have some conception of the 
 reason why the term reeve had a natural tendency 
 
 Peneance, poenitentia, from pener. See Ro(iuefort, Diet. 
 Langue Rom.
 
 44 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 to slide, in the language of our forefathers, into 
 the sense of a reaver and robber.* 
 
 The clergy, to collect their revenue, employed 
 the same means as the state. They issued coin, 
 always required to be of the same weight and 
 purity with that of the king, but very generally 
 having a different stamp ; and to denote from what 
 quarter it came, the name of the minter and his 
 town was added. At Canterbury, in the time of 
 Athelstan, there were seven mints : four for the 
 king, two for the archbishop, and one for the abbot. 
 At Rochester, three mints : two for the king, and 
 one for the bishop. There were eight in London, 
 six at Winchester, and two each at several other 
 places, in which the number for the church is not 
 mentioned; but from the instances given, their 
 possessions and therefore their receipts were about 
 half as great as those of the king. 
 
 We have seen that many of the words made use 
 of for expressing taxation, exhibit a decided incli- 
 nation to run up to the Latin for their original ; and 
 there can be no doubt, that most of them sprung 
 from that source, in consequence of the power ex- 
 ercised over this country by the Romans. Caesar 
 imposed tribute on the Britons of the southern coast, 
 
 * Tillemont, in his Hist, des Emp. calls the Actuarii, (a sort 
 of Commissaries of the Roman armies) les Grejffiers. Du Cange 
 connects these Greffiers with the Reeve: " Grajio, Graffio, 
 Graphic, Gravio, Teutonice, Graef, (Schilteri, Grave, Grefe, 
 Gerafe, Reve,) comes, presses, prsefectus. Ita passim usurpant 
 banc vocem Scriptores."
 
 TAXATION' THK ORIGIN OF COIN. 45 
 
 in the year B. C. 54, and ordered it to be paid 
 annually. About 70 years after, the Britons sent 
 tribute to Augustus, to turn him from his threat- 
 ened purpose, of punishing them for their former 
 neglect of this duty. From that time, tolls (tcXj?) 
 were regularly paid, as Strabo relates,* on the in- 
 terchange of commodities between this country 
 and the continent. Among these taxed articles 
 were the following : — ivory bits (for bridles), 
 torques (wreaths of goldf and other necklaces), 
 amber, and glass vessels. Tribute, we are told, 
 was not insisted on, because it would require a 
 greater military force than the Romans then had 
 in Britain to collect it. Strabo mentions other 
 commodities, for which this country was at that 
 time distinguished ; viz., corn, cattle, gold, silver, 
 iron, slaves, and hounds, the last of so excellent a 
 kind, as to be in request among the Gauls. 
 
 From these instances, we may collect with cer- 
 tainty that taxes were levied here by the Romans 
 at a very early period ; and we learn from Tacitus, 
 that in his time, they were neither trifling in 
 amount, nor unfelt by the people. Agricola, he 
 says, to redress some grievances of which they 
 complained, made the payment of corn and the 
 tribute more easy, by rendering it more equal, 
 
 * Strabo, B. 4. p. 200. 
 
 t The Romans call them viriolcB, and CelticcB. The former 
 term., with viricB, of which it is a diminutive, appears to be the 
 same as wire, and as the British word gwyraw, to twist or bend. 
 Celticce is descriptive of the people from whom they came.
 
 46 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 and by suppressing those abuses which were more 
 grievous than the tribute itself. For instance, the 
 people were compelled, while their own granaries 
 were, as in mockery, shut up, to buy and sell 
 their corn at such prices as the actuarii or reeves 
 pleased to fix. They v^^ere forced also to send it 
 to distant granaries, passing by those which were 
 in their own immediate neighbourhood. All this 
 was done, in the hope that, to purchase immunity 
 from such oppression, they might be inclined to 
 comply with whatever terms their rulers chose to 
 exact. Tacitus puts into the mouth of Galgacus, a 
 British chief, addressing his soldiers, the following 
 strong expressions : " To spoil, to murder, to ravish, 
 they falsely call government, and where they make 
 a solitude, they call it peace. Children and rela- 
 tions are naturally dear to all : of these they be- 
 reave us to make them slaves abroad. Our wives 
 and sisters, if they escape hostile lust, they defile 
 under the names of friends and guests. Our 
 goods and fortunes they carry off for tribute, our 
 provisions for annual supplies."* A more impar- 
 tial portrait of these actuarii, it may be conceived, is 
 that drawn by their countryman and contemporary, 
 Sextus Aurelius Victor. He thus describes them : 
 ''A race of men, especially at that time, profligate, 
 venal, cunning, factious ; immoderately fond of 
 wealth, and naturally dextrous in contriving and 
 concealing the frauds by which they obtained it. 
 Having the tribute of corn and other supplies under 
 * Tacitus's Life of Agricola, c. 30, 31.
 
 TAXATION' THK ORIGIN' OF COIN. 47 
 
 their control, they became the torment of all the 
 productive classes, but especially of the husband- 
 man — yet at suitable times they had the precau- 
 tion to bestow some of their wealth on those by 
 whose stupidity and at whose expense they had 
 acquired it." * 
 
 As it is impossible to carry on such a govern- 
 ment without com, the instrument of taxation; 
 we may be certain, from this evidence, if we had 
 no other, that the Romans introduced coin into 
 Britain, that being the form of symbolic money in 
 their own country. At first, they would have oc- 
 casion only for as much as sufficed to levy tolls on 
 merchandize, imported or exported. Afterward, 
 when tribute was to be raised, and especially 
 when the contributions were to be equally borne, 
 according to the wise and humane policy of Agri- 
 cola, the whole machinery of the system of money 
 would be called into action. On investigation, it 
 will appear that such was the case, — that there 
 were these two different aeras of coin under the 
 Roman power in this country : — the first is dis- 
 tinctly marked, as partaking both of the British 
 and the Roman character ; the latter existed in 
 all the perfection of the Roman style. Specimens 
 of the former kind are rare which have come down 
 
 * Genus hominum, praesertim hac tempestate, nequam, venale, 
 callidum, seditiosum, habendi cupidum, atque ad patrandas fraudes, 
 velandasque, quasi a natura factum. — Annonae doniinans, eoque 
 utilia curantibus, et fortunis aratorum infestum ; prudens in tem- 
 pore lis largiendi, quorum vecordia damnoque opes contraxerit. — 
 Vic*, de Caes.
 
 48 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 to US, because the use of coin for this purpose was 
 limited ; but those of the latter are abundant be- 
 yond description, as the occasions for its employ- 
 ment were numberless. 
 
 Nearly all our antiquaries agree in assigning 
 the coinage of the former class to the Britons ; 
 but unless the Britons taxed themselves, there 
 would be no need of their coining money ; and as 
 in their state of independence they were never 
 known to originate any, I conceive it improbable, 
 that they should at this time have taken up the 
 practice, in imitation of the Romans, and after- 
 wards have discontinued it. The error of sup- 
 posing that these coins were British money, arose 
 from not considering the nature of coin ; that as it 
 is a means of taxation, it is an instrument of pu- 
 nishment ; and that he who intends to tax or pu- 
 nish provides the means himself: the culprit 
 does not willingly make a rod for his own back. 
 Prima facie, therefore, we have every reason to 
 think that the coins in question are Roman. They 
 were probably struck in Britain ; native artists 
 may possibly have been employed upon them 
 (though this is not very likely to have been the 
 case) ; but that their origin was Roman, that their 
 use was Roman, and that the only connection 
 they could have with the Britons was in being 
 put in operation amongst them and against them, 
 admits not, I think, of a doubt. 
 
 As one proof that they are not of British origin, 
 nor even of native execution, is the ironical talent
 
 TAXATION THE OllIGIN 1< COIN. 49 
 
 tliey exhibit : — they ridicule the people at whose 
 expense they are made, by the most grotesque 
 exhibitions of them, and of those objects which 
 they held in esteem. Another and most remark- 
 able characteristic of their origin and use, is the 
 ^'unmeaning ornaments"* with which they are 
 supposed to abound, but which are, in reality, 
 fantastic representations of the objects taxed ; 
 such as bridles and bridle-bits, bracelets, torques 
 and their appendages, pearls, ivory pins, human 
 beings, chariots, horses, oxen, hogs, and ears of 
 corn. The delineation of some of these figures is 
 often effected by an odd arrangement of the mi- 
 nuter articles ; — but all is so managed as to con- 
 vey the strongest feeling of contempt for the Bri- 
 tish people. To the insults of the revenue officers, 
 as well as to the violence of the military, Tacitus 
 ascribes the revolt under Boadicea; and he does 
 the Britons, we would hope, but justice, when he 
 says, ''they may be reduced to obey, but to suffer 
 Avrong and be slaves they cannot bear." f 
 
 Before his time, this licentious kind of coin had 
 been discontinued. After the subjugation of Bri- 
 tain by Claudius, a regular series of Roman mo- 
 ney commenced, as we are told by Gildas, the 
 British historian. The coinage was ample, as the 
 Romans had mints in many towns ; but oppression 
 had its usual effect of stimulating men to forge it 
 for their own advantage. Counterfeit coin would 
 
 * As Mr. Ruding calls them. t Tacitus, Agric. c. 13. 
 
 £
 
 50 TAXATION The origin of coin. 
 
 appear to have been resorted to as a means of es- 
 caping payment of the full burden of the tribute ; 
 — many moulds for it have been discovered in dif- 
 ferent parts of this kingdom, made for casting a 
 great variety of Roman coins ; and as at that time 
 copper was cheap enough, inducement was not 
 vi^anting for men to pass off these counterfeits on 
 the tax-gatherer, to defeat the object of their 
 rulers, and save their own property. In the course 
 of time, however, both true and false money lost 
 their value : the Romans retired ; tolls and tribute 
 ceased ; and the coin by which the system had 
 been worked lay like dross upon the ground. 
 Wherever we dig we find it ; — the quantity is 
 astonishing ; — and almost all historians have won- 
 dered why it was all at once so completely neg- 
 lected. Some have blamed the Saxons for want 
 of common discernment, or of a taste for the arts of 
 life, — • some have thought the Roman soldiers 
 buried their treasure in hopes of ere long return- 
 ing. Many other conjectures have been hazarded ; 
 but the only true solution of the phoenomenon 
 seems to me to be this : the money was symbolic, — ■ 
 its intrinsic value was next to nothing, — and when 
 the government was gone which had used it as the 
 means of obtaining that real money, which now 
 lay undisturbed in the possession of its rightful 
 owners, the symbol wq.s of no use to any one. — 
 As for the Saxons and Danes, they did not employ 
 copper-coin even when they had learnt the art of 
 taxation.
 
 TAXATION' THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 51 
 
 If we enquire for the origin of coin among the 
 French, we shall find it to exist in the closest con- 
 nection with taxation. The Romans, as long as 
 they occupied the country, pursued the same 
 means of raising a revenue there which they em- 
 ployed in England, and in all their conquered 
 provinces. After they retired, a turbulent pe- 
 riod succeeded, during which no one had sway 
 and strength enough to levy regular contributions : 
 — during this period no money was struck; — but 
 as soon as Clovis obtained the supreme rule, taxa- 
 tion and its instrument, coin, again make their 
 appearance. That prince, had " in his treasury," 
 as Gregory of Tours says, ** neither gold nor silver 
 money such as we have now."* He drew directly 
 from the people the supplies of stores necessary 
 for the support and clothing of the army and the 
 court : but if not in his reign, we have in that of 
 his successors abundant proofs, that money was 
 coined as a means of paying tribute, not only from 
 the people to the king for his own use, h\xt from 
 the king to the Roman power. Clovis, after his con- 
 version to Christianity, rendered oblations to the 
 church, either as a voluntary offering, or as an 
 acknowledgment of obedience to the superiors of 
 that church. His successors did the same ; and 
 much of the money in which that payment was 
 made is still extant : — it is generally of gold, and 
 has all the qualities of Roman money, being of the 
 
 * Neque aurum, neque argentum, sicut nunc est, in thesauris 
 habebatur. — Le Blanc, p. 5. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 same weight, and so like it, in execution, as to 
 appear to have issued from the mint of the em- 
 perors Some of it was probably coined at Con- 
 stantinople, from the letters conob which appear 
 upon it : the symbols of Christianity are found on 
 all ; even on that which is coined in the earliest age. 
 The kings of the first race obtained the gold 
 in any form they could ; it was then melted 
 down, purified, and coined, some at Constanstino- 
 ple, some elsewhere, but under the same autho- 
 rity to all appearance, and by foreign artists. The 
 Roman power sent it to the different religious 
 houses throughout France for the support of those 
 establishments. In their support it was again ex- 
 pended, and this paved the way again for its next 
 collection. By these means the Roman power 
 maintained a prodigious influence throughout that 
 part of Europe which had been converted by the 
 zeal of its clergy : an influence which increased 
 till under the popes it began to manifest itself in 
 acts of authority, to which even monarchs were 
 forced to yield obedience. For about two cen- 
 turies and a half, tribute was paid or offerings 
 made to the church in this manner, gold being 
 apparently the principal means by which it was 
 effected. After this period, we find among the 
 coins of Charlemagne, deniers oi silver coined ex- 
 pressly for the service of St. Peter's Church 
 at Rome, corresponding to the Peter's pence of 
 England, which were first coined but a short time 
 before : on one of these deniers, still existing, is 
 the inscription sanctus petrus, roma. — All
 
 TAXATIOX THE ORIGIN' OF COIN. 53 
 
 the coins of the second race are rude in compa- 
 rison with those of the first, from which we may 
 infer that they were struck in France ; but if so, 
 the process of taxation for the benefit of the Church 
 of Rome, was equally well answered by them : 
 for if they were coined by the king for the special 
 purpose of being given to the pope, they were by 
 his direction, and through his agents, again dis- 
 tributed to the clergy of France. 
 
 Among the Romans, the commencement of 
 coin is no less distinctly marked by being also 
 the commencement of ta.vatiou. Servius TuUius, 
 B. C. 555, invented money, which before his time 
 was rude and unstamped : it was therefore coin 
 which he invented, for as real money, the bronze 
 of which it consisted was current before. But the 
 same king also instituted the Census, a sort of 
 property tax, for the due levying of which he 
 divided the people into six classes, the sixth only 
 being exempt.* Livy adds, that he laid out the 
 city into four districts or tribes, to effect his pur- 
 pose the more completely, which word, tribe, he 
 conceives, took its rise from the tribute or taxes at 
 this time imposed. | Varro more correctly inverts 
 this derivation. 
 
 * Servius Rex primus signavit aes. Antea rudi usos Romae 
 Timaeus tradit. . . . Maximus census ex M assium fuit ilio rege, et 
 ideo hsec prima classis." Plin. xxxiii. c. 13. 
 
 t Tribus eas appellavit ; ut ego arbitror, ab tribute ; nam ejus 
 quoque aequaliter ex censu cont'erendi ab eodem inita ratio est." 
 Livy, B. i. c. 43.
 
 54 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to imagine a stronger 
 instance than this in proof of the simultaneous 
 origin of coin and taxation. The annals of Roman 
 History, however, afford another very striking one, 
 for the knowledge of which I am indebted to the 
 recent lectures of Dr. Cardwell ; and if I draw 
 from it a conclusion different from that which he 
 has done, it will be owing probably to my atten- 
 tion having been directed to circumstances which 
 did not at the time engage his consideration. After 
 remarking that Tacitus makes mention of an earth- 
 quake which destroyed in one night twelve cities 
 of Asia,* on which account the Emperor Tiberius 
 was so moved with compassion that he allowed 
 the inhabitants of those cities immunity from all 
 taxes for the space of five years : Dr. C. proceeds 
 as follows. " This event took place in the seven- 
 teenth year of the Christian era, and we must 
 enquire, therefore, to what cause it was owing 
 that the medal, [a coin of Tiberius,] which was 
 clearly intended to commemorate the munificence 
 of the emperor, was not minted till five years 
 afterwards." The learned lecturer thinks " it 
 might be a sufficient answer to observe, that some 
 few years must necessarily have elapsed, before 
 these towns could be again inhabited, and that 
 five years, as we learn from Tacitus, was the 
 term actually allowed, in the cases in which the 
 emperor granted a remission of their taxes :" but 
 
 * Tacitus, Annals. B.2.C.47.
 
 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 55 
 
 he prefers to this plain and apparently satisfactory- 
 answer, another which has more ingenuity and 
 research to recommend it : for, finding that after 
 the destruction of the Asiatic cities, a colossal 
 statue was erected to Tiberius in the Forum 
 Caesaris, with the figures and names of the seve- 
 ral cities in relief on the base '* as an accompa- 
 niment to it, in honour of his munificence," he 
 adds, " Now what can be more reasonable, than 
 that on the erection of this statue, an event which 
 could not well take place till some few years after 
 the desertion, a new coin was struck by the se- 
 nate in token of their admiration?''* This conjec- 
 ture may have the merit of great ingenuity ; but 
 if we regard Coin as an Instrument of Taxation^ 
 we need no other explanation than that which 
 Tacitus has given. According to him the cities 
 were to have a respite for five years from paying 
 the accustomed taxes. During that period, there- 
 fore, no coin for their use was struck — at the 
 expiration of the five years, when the taxes are again 
 levied, the coins for that purpose make their ap- 
 pearance. In this transaction, where all is na- 
 tural and according to the facts, we have a per- 
 fect illustration of the origin and use of coin among 
 the Romans, as well as in the cities and countries 
 which they reduced into subjection. 
 
 In attributing the invention of coin among 
 
 * Dr. Cardwell's Lectures on the Coinage of the Greeks and 
 Romans, p. 193.
 
 56 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIisT. 
 
 the Athenians to Theseus, on the report of Plu- 
 tarch, we run some risk of incurring the censure 
 of those who regard all that is said concerning- 
 this hero and his acts as fabulous. But even if 
 he were a mythological personage, the accounts 
 which are given of him show a consistency of de- 
 sign in those who first conceived them, which lets 
 us into their views, and these are of as great inte- 
 rest to our inquiry as any picture of the age could 
 be in which Theseus is supposed to have lived. 
 " He coined money," says Plutarch, " which he 
 marked with the stamp of an ox, in memory of 
 the bull of Marathon, or of Taurus the captain of 
 Minos, or else to provoke his citizens to give them- 
 selves to husbandry * They say also, that from this 
 money, the words HecatombcEon and Decahceon were 
 derived, which signify worth 100 oxen, and worth 
 10 oxen.'" The third of these reasons for his coin- 
 ing money is doubtless the true one; but how 
 should his coin provoke the citizens to labour in 
 the fields, unless it were used as a means of taia- 
 tion 1 And that he did tax them is at least pro- 
 bable, since he was the first who established a 
 form of government among the people of Attica, 
 making Athens the seat of power. His object was 
 to form them into a republic ; for which purpose 
 he divided the people into three classes, giving the 
 privilege of rule to those of the first class, from 
 
 * — T] Trpos yewpytcij/ rovs ttoXitus irapa/caXwv. Plutarch s 
 Life of Theseus.
 
 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 57 
 
 whom also judges and priests were selected, and 
 the right of election to the two inferior classes, 
 which w^ere composed of artificers and husband- 
 men. Having completed his design, he resigned 
 tlie regal power which he had assumed for that 
 end.* In all these particulars we see the signs 
 of a regular institution of the several orders in a 
 state, no matter by whom or under what name it 
 was effected ; and such an institution could not be 
 supported without taxes, in a republic, whatever 
 it might be in a monarchy : these then were cer- 
 tainly levied, and as a means of levying them co'ui 
 was necessary, the invention of which was conse- 
 quently ascribed to Theseus, — that is, to the man, 
 whatever be his name, who first devised the sys- 
 tem of polity, and its consequence — taxation. 
 
 But let these particulars go for what they are 
 worth : we come to less questionable matter, when 
 we commence the history of com in Greece with 
 Phido, the Argive, who took upon himself the 
 supreme power at iEgina, about 900 years B.C., 
 and about 300 after the period assigned to The- 
 seus. He is said to have invented silver money, 
 as also weights and measures. The invention of 
 the two latter is assigned to him by Herodotus, 
 who describes him as the most imperious of all the 
 Greeks. t The Oxford marbles attest the fact of 
 
 * Plutarch's Life of Theseus. 
 
 f Atto ct rieXoTrovvTjffou, 4>£tcw>'0J tov Apy£iwv Tvoavi'ov irais 
 AtWKtjfJjC, 4>£tfwros f£ TOV 70 fitT^m Troir]iTavTO<: UeXoiroi'vijaioKTi, 
 Kai vlipiiravTOS ^tyitrru cq EWjjiwi' (nramiiv. Herodotus, v [, 127.
 
 58. TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 his coining silver in the year 894 B. C.,* and that 
 he was also the inventor of weights and measures.'}" 
 How to explain the latter is the difficulty. Sal- 
 masius thinks it ought to be understood of his 
 having restored the weights and measures to their 
 proper standard ;J but this is not consistent with 
 the statement of any of the writers who narrate 
 the fact, nor is it likely that a restoration would be 
 wanted at so early a period, as to be liable to be re- 
 corded by mistake for an inventmi. Yet it seems 
 improbable on the other hand, that the world 
 should not have possessed weights and measures 
 long before. We know, indeed, that both are 
 mentioned far earlier than this in the scriptures ; 
 and by trading with the Phoenicians and Egyp- 
 tians, the Greeks could not fail to become ac- 
 quainted with them. In a note on the passage 
 from Herodotus, above quoted, Larcher says, "As 
 soon as a nation begins to be civilized, weights 
 and measures become necessary to them, and they 
 are not slow to invent them. There is every pro- 
 bability that they were known in Greece long 
 before the reign of Phido. He may have rectified 
 and improved those which existed in his time, and 
 perhaps introduced others, more correct or more 
 convenient than those previously in use : for it is 
 scarcely possible that before this prince no such 
 thing was known in Greece. The Egyptians and 
 
 * Cardwell's Lectures, p. 110. f Epoch. 31, p. 23. 
 
 X Salmasius, p. 431.
 
 TAXATIOX THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 59 
 
 the Asiaticks had them before the existence of 
 the Greeks, probably before Greece was peopled 
 at all." 
 
 The difficulty which every one has felt to in 
 terpret the invention of weights and measures 
 by Phido, in any sense consistent with proba- 
 bility, is, I think, insurmountable, except on 
 the following hypothesis: — Having possessed 
 himself of the supreme power, he invented coin for 
 the purpose of levying taxes, which were laid 
 on certain articles by tveig/it or measure. Sup- 
 pose, for instance, that he intended to tax icine, 
 or oil, or corn, the only way in which it could be 
 done would be by affixing to a specified quantity 
 of each the payment of a certain piece of silver. 
 To ascertain that quantity, a Jixecl weight or mea- 
 sure is required. On all sales in the markets, or 
 harbours, for export or the country trade, — on 
 all importations, in like manner, he might by this 
 means, lay a duty to provide the state with a re- 
 venue, — and thus the measure or the weight would 
 be thenceforth established as a normal measure or 
 weight, to which the whole country, and all who 
 traded with it, must conform. Again, if he wished 
 to rate the several proprietors of the soil according 
 to their respective ability, so as to raise from them 
 a sort of property-tax, how could he manage it 
 without the institution of a standard weight and 
 measure ? But this would be a novelty, a thing 
 without a precedent ; and therefore, granting that 
 he was the first who introduced the principle
 
 60 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 of laying taxes on commodities according to weight 
 and measure, he was the inventor of both, in the 
 sense of giving to them that certain and legal foun- 
 dation which they never had before. 
 
 There can be little doubt that in the more ex- 
 tensive signification of the word invention, it 
 cannot apply to him ; weights and measures must 
 have existed long before ; but whether the inven- 
 tion is to be ascribed to Cain, as Josephus thought,* 
 whether, as Gregory Abulfaragius affirms, to Sa- 
 mirus, who reigned at Babylon next after Nim- 
 rod, and was the contemporary of Serug, the father 
 of Nahor, and great-grandfather of Abraham •,-\ or 
 whether, as Aulus Gellius asserts, to Palamedes, J 
 (who was also considered the inventor of the art 
 of numeration)!! is a question which we need 
 not touch upon. Our enquiry is now narrowed 
 to this : Was Phido, the Argive, the first who 
 established weights and measures on a certain scale 
 as a means of ta.vation at iEgina ? 
 
 It is certain that this Phido was the person to 
 whom the invention of measures of a certain size 
 was attributed, and that such measures bore his 
 name to a much later age. " The Phidon," says 
 Julius Pollux, " is a sort of vase in which oil is 
 kept, so called from the Fhidonian measures:''^ 
 
 * Joseph. Antiq, 
 
 t Abulfaragius, Chron. p. 9. 
 
 + Pliny, B. vii. c. 57. 
 
 II Plato, Rep. B. 7. Vol. 2. p. 522. 
 
 § Julius Pollux, B. 10. c. 45.
 
 TAXATION THE ORI.GIX OF COIN. Gl 
 
 and Larcher, who quotes this passage, further ob- 
 serves, " The scholiast of Pindar explains the 
 words iTnruoig iv evreeomv, in the 27th verse of the 
 
 13th Olympic, by ra <l)aSwv£ia ayyeta."* HencC it 
 
 appears that the Phidonian vessels were vases of a 
 ve?y large size. We can go farther, and ascertain 
 even the shape of them with great probability, 
 from an ancient coin, supposed to be of Boeotia, 
 which has on the one side a buckler, on the other 
 a large tall vessel, shaped like an urn, but with a 
 very slender neck and stem, having two handles 
 or ears that rise from the belly to the top : on the 
 same side is the inscription, (1>IA0. This vase, 
 which is very elegant in form, was probably of 
 considerable capacity, since it seems to have been 
 the original of the o/it(/)oo£uc of the Athenians, and the 
 amphora of the Romans, vessels which contained 
 not less than from seven to ten of our gallons. 
 The names of Siwtjj, ko^oq, and /cepa/titov (as formed 
 of earthenware), appear also to have been applied 
 to them. Some of the Boeotian coins exhibit a 
 bunch of grapes above the vase : others have a 
 flask, or an olive leaf, or an ear of corn. Now 
 what can these emblems signify in conjunction 
 with such a vase, but that it was a measure of 
 wine, or oil, or corn, and that the coin on which 
 they appeared was a token of taxation, the dis- 
 charge of which was effected by payment of that 
 token to the state, when the measure to which it 
 
 • Larcher's Herodotus, B. 6. c. 127 note.
 
 62 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 applied was sold ? Or that the owners of estates 
 were liable to pay a certain number of these coins 
 to the state, perhaps as many of them as they had 
 rents of such measures receivable from their 
 farms ? Let it be conceded, then, that Phido 
 was the first who instituted this custom ; and the 
 whole of the difficulty vanishes. 
 
 iEgina set the example of such taxation, which 
 was soon followed by other countries : Boeotia, 
 as we have seen from her coins, was one. But 
 the Athenians, in their imitation, confirm most 
 remarkably the view we have taken. About 300 
 years after the invention assigned to Phido, Solon 
 made a rate of taxation for the inhabitants of 
 Attica, founded on the rents of their estates. 
 Dividing the people into classes, he includes in 
 his first class all those who had an income of 500 
 or more measures, liquid and dry ; that is, in winey 
 oil, or corn : 300 was the minimum of the second 
 class : 150 of the third. In this he acted exactly 
 as we suppose Phido to have done : but what 
 makes his imitation of Phido most complete, is the 
 fact that on the coins of Athens struck after this 
 event, with the exception perhaps of the smallest, 
 the identical vase of Phido is found, lying on its 
 side, so as to form a stand for the Owl which occu- 
 pies the centre of the coin. This proves that the 
 measure made use of was the Pludonian vase ; and 
 its employment, as a means of levying the taxes 
 in the time of Solon, shews the use to which, 
 in the opinion of the Athenians, it had been ori-
 
 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 63 
 
 ginally applied. — Herodotus speaks of the ar- 
 rogance of Phido : he was ilhistrious by birth, 
 and successful over his rivals. Strabo describes 
 him as tenth in descent from Temenus (or rather 
 from Hercules), and the most powerful of all the 
 princes of his age, uniting in his own dominion the 
 several provinces of the Peloponnesus which had 
 formed the kingdom of his ancestors, the Hera- 
 clidae.* It is related by Ephorus, that Phido 
 constituted -^gina an emporium for seafaring men, 
 employed in traffic, to resort to ; thinking that 
 the best way of turning to account its natural 
 poverty of soil : t which accords with the notion 
 we had formed of his having taxed articles of 
 import and expoj't. J 
 
 ^ithti)va C£ Tov Apyelov ctKarov fiev ovra mro Trjfievov, cv- 
 vafitL c' vTTEpftefiXrjfJievoy tovs car' avrov. Strabo, B. 8. p. 358. 
 
 t Ephorus, in Strabo, speaks of Phido as the first who coined 
 silver money : — E^opos c'ev Aiyivri apyvpoy TrpiDrov kOTrz/vai 
 (jtrjaiv UTTO <^£icti)vos, and then adds, ^fiiropeiov yap yevEtrdat, iia 
 TJ]v XvwpoTTjTa Tyjs ■)^o)pas, rwv ayBpujTrwy BaXarruvpyovvTMy 
 tfiTropiKdJs. Strabo, B. 8. p. 376. The soil, it appears, though 
 stony, was very productive of barley : cio-rrep ^"^'J Trdaa eoti, 
 Kpido(f>opos ce li:ayws. p. 375. 
 
 I So much business was done in the way of measuring corn, 
 &c. that the slaves, who were extremely numerous, were called by 
 a name derived from that occupation, ■ypiviKOfiiTpai, chcenix-mea- 
 surers. — Boeckh's Economy of Athens, vol. i. p. 55. The Chcenix 
 held about a pint and a half English wine measure : 48 of these 
 made a Medimnus of corn ; and the same quantity was contained 
 in 72 Xestes, or pints English, which made a Metre tes in liquid 
 measure. (See Arbuthnot's Tables.) The large Vase (the Phidon 
 or ofifopevs) held therefore about 9 gallons English measure, or 
 8 gallons of Winchester measure.
 
 64 TAXATION THE ORIGIN OF COIN. 
 
 From all these circumstances and authorities 
 it is evident that the invention of standard weights 
 and measures was a necessary preliminary to the 
 species of taxation which Phido was about to in- 
 troduce ; but if we had no evidence of the kind, we 
 should feel justified in concluding that he taxed 
 the people whom he governed, for otherwise he 
 would not be reported to have invented money. 
 His coin was a silver drachma, of 90 grains Troy, 
 long famous for its weight, being called iray^nav, 
 or the thick, to distinguish it from the Attic 
 drachma, which, after Solon's alteration of the 
 coin, was only 54 grains. Before this alteration 
 the Attic drachma was the weight of the Boeo- 
 tian, or 72 grains. The reduction being regu- 
 larly made, by fifths, from 90 grains to 72, and 
 from 72 to 54, shews that the Phidonian money, 
 and the Phidonian weights, were a standard for 
 the Athenian people at an early period, equally 
 with the Phidonian measures of capacity. We 
 learn also, from the payment of a drachma in the 
 time of Solon, as the tax on a medimnus of corn 
 and a metretes of wine or oil, that the sum levied 
 by Phido was probably an Mginetan drachma on 
 the contents of his large vase.
 
 Ci> 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 In treating oi symbolic money, we decided that 
 it was not necessan/ that it should possess intrinsic 
 value : but a question may still be raised, whether 
 it may not be desirable that it should have it. Let 
 us therefore, consider this question ; for there are 
 many who are ready, without consideration, to give 
 it an answer in the affirmative. 
 
 It is certain, that almost all men believe it to be 
 safer to have a circulating medium composed of 
 the precious metals ; because, as they argue, if the 
 government should be overthrown, the people 
 would then have something in their hands which 
 could not fail to prove valuable, and which they 
 would not have, if their money consisted of Exche- 
 quer bills or Bank notes. 
 
 The question in this case does not concern the 
 fractions of a pound ; with these, therefore, we will 
 not embarrass the discussion. It may be more 
 convenient, and cannot do harm, for these fractions 
 to be expressed by shillings and pence. But if it 
 be affirmed that we should be safer from loss, if all 
 our pounds were to consist of gold or silver coin, 
 
 F
 
 66 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 I confess that I cannot see any grounds for the 
 assertion. 
 
 For suppose the government were to fail, and 
 that our symbolic money consisted wholly of paper : 
 what would ensue? — Every man's store of such 
 money would become of no value. — True: but on 
 the other hand, he has no further taxes to pay : 
 he is a gainer, therefore, instead of a loser, by the 
 alteration. But further : how came he to be pos- 
 sessed of this symbolic money? He had given 
 value for it : he had paid real money for it, let us 
 suppose, to the amount of his annual contribution 
 to the taxes. His real money, then, the govern- 
 ment have received, and he is now holding their 
 tokens of receipt in his hands, but only until the 
 tax-gatherer comes to collect them, in order to re- 
 turn them to the Exchequer. These tokens, there- 
 fore, these Exchequer bills, which he holds to the 
 amount of his taxation, are in this case not his ; 
 they do not belong to him, but to the govern- 
 ment; consequently if the government fails, he 
 can suffer no loss on that score. — But perhaps 
 you will say, he has more bills, or tokens of 
 receipt, than are sufficient to represent his own 
 share of taxation, and to the amount of the 
 surplus he will suffer loss. — Unquestionably he 
 will : but why does he keep them a day in his 
 possession, especially if he has any apprehension 
 of the stability of the government? Somebody 
 wants these tokens of receipt to make up the 
 amount of taxation due from himself, for which he
 
 IMPERFPXTION OF COIX AS MONEY. 67 
 
 is ready and anxious to give real money ; so that 
 he who holds more than he needs, of these tokens, 
 injures that man without benefiting himself. To 
 secure his own interest, let him part with them at 
 once for some of that real money which can be laid 
 up with safety ; such as land, houses, furniture, 
 pictures, books, corn, hay, cattle, gold, silver, 
 brass, copper, &c. : let him pay his debts with 
 them ; let him employ labourers and artisans with 
 them. A thousand ways offer, by which he may 
 easily get rid of this superfluous symbolic money, 
 which, as it is not properly his own, he ought not 
 to keep, and he had no need to trouble himself to 
 get. If, after all this, the government should 
 fail, while he has more of its symbolic money in his 
 hands than he ought to have, the fault will be en- 
 tirely his own, and he will deserve to lose the 
 value of it for his folly. 
 
 And how would he protect himself from loss ? 
 l^Y giving it intrinsic value? Let us see how that 
 would operate. Suppose that at present the 
 people pay in ?'eal money fifty millions annually 
 for the exigencies of the state, and that the symbol 
 of payment, the token of receipt, is paper ; but it 
 is proposed, that henceforth this paper should be 
 changed into gold money, because we want to 
 be secure from loss in the event of a revolution. 
 The change may be made, but how will it be 
 effected ? The country must be taxed to produce 
 100 millions instead of 50, that with the second 
 50 millions there may be the means of buying as 
 
 V 2
 
 68 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 much gold and silver as will represent the 50 al- 
 ready paid on account of taxes. Thus we dispossess 
 ourselves at once of the second 50 millions, we 
 deprive ourselves for a certainty of all that real 
 money, in order that we may not run the risk 
 of losing some part of that real money at a future 
 day, which day may never arrive. What would 
 be thought of a man, who, on paying rent to his 
 landlord's steward to the amount of 100/., should 
 insist on giving him another 100/. that he might 
 have a receipt engraven on a plate of gold worth 
 100/. ; and thus, because the steward might go off 
 with the money, or his landlord might die, and 
 the next heir might say that his receipt was in- 
 formal, and he should insist on the repayment of 
 the 100/., he would feel secure from loss, because 
 of his engraved golden receipt, worth the money, 
 which he would then be able to offer him. Would 
 such a man be long out of Bedlam ? Yet this is 
 the case every day with every man in this nation. 
 We pay the state in real money, 1/. or 10/., or 
 100/., and a receipt is given us on a piece of gold, 
 worth 1/. or 10/., or 100/. respectively, for which 
 we also jmy, and then we fancy we are safe^ and 
 cannot lose that sum if we are called upon to pay 
 it over again ; — not reflecting, that if we are safe, 
 it proceeds from our having realized the utmost 
 possible extent of our loss already. If any proof 
 were wanting of the proneness of mankind to go 
 blindly on in the track of error, when once they 
 have been taught to tread it, none stronger could
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIX AS MONEY. 69 
 
 be adduced than this general persuasion of the sc- 
 curity to be derived from a metallic currency. 
 
 I have assumed, in the above supposition, that 
 for a second 50 millions of real money, gold might 
 be obtained in sufficient quantity to make tokens 
 of receipt of equal value with the first 50 millions; 
 but this is by far too favourable a statement of 
 the case. Perhaps five millions extra could be 
 had without paying a much advanced price for it ; 
 but when we require more than that, we shall 
 for every additional million be charged an addi- 
 tional premium, progressively leading us on to an 
 intolerable sacrifice of all other kinds of property. 
 We may, however, choose to disbelieve this fact ; — 
 we may tell the people, the hard-working, honest 
 people, the productive classes of every denomina- 
 tion, — whose labour is so incessant that they have 
 not time to inquire or reflect, and who trust that 
 those above them, as they have the leisure, have 
 also the inclination and ability to discover the 
 truth, and to direct them to what is right, — we 
 may tell tlicm that it is desirable that all the paper 
 money heretofore representative of taxes should 
 henceforth be convertible into gold ; and that till 
 their labour and ingenuity has produced those 
 goods which must bring in this gold from foreign 
 countries, they can be allowed but little rest, 
 and scanty food, for themselves and their fami- 
 lies, — we may tell them this, and they will believe 
 us, and they will work like horses to accomplish 
 their task ; but what then have we gained? Alas,
 
 70 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 that efforts so noble should not be successful! 
 We unwind at night what we spin by day. Neither 
 50 nor 100 nor 200 millions will suffice, to accom- 
 plish that which nature has forbidden to, be done : 
 and this we have found out. Not all the mines in 
 all the world will produce gold and silver enough 
 to satisfy our wants. Every effort we make to 
 obtain it does but cheapen our own commodities. 
 And what we get we cannot keep : we draw water 
 in a sieve. We deprive other countries of their 
 proper share of the precious metals, at an enor- 
 mous sacrifice of our own commodities ; and by that 
 very act we increase so much the value of those 
 metals abroad, as to render it impossible for us to 
 
 retain them here. 
 
 " Last scene of all, 
 That ends this strange eventful history ;" — 
 
 whatever distress may be inflicted on our own 
 
 people, in their endeavours to acquire, to preserve, 
 
 or to regain the gold so much insisted on; the 
 
 foreigner can have it back again at no advance, 
 
 the absentee can draw his rents in it, and double 
 
 his income by his want of patriotism. We have 
 
 bound ourselves by an act of parliament, a most 
 
 notable act of folly, that while all other kinds of 
 
 real money shall be suffered to rise in value with 
 
 respect to symbolic money, in consequence of a 
 
 greater demand than usual, or a greater scarcity, 
 
 that article which is always in demand, that which 
 
 is naturally most scarce, and which we make 
 
 artificially more so, — gold shall not be allowed
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 71 
 
 to rise in value in relation to symbolic motm/, though 
 all other nations in the world covet it, and to our- 
 selves it is indispensable ! 
 
 We need enquire no further for the cause of 
 our national distress. Till this impolitic law is 
 annulled, all things will be in disorder, and till 
 then it cannot be seen what else may require to 
 be done ; but it is my firm conviction, that neither 
 in the amount of our national debt, nor in the 
 number of our unemployed poor, nor in the use of 
 machinery, nor in the freest of free trade, would 
 any inconvenience be sustained, if the " springs 
 of industry" were but relieved from the weight of 
 this law; and when it is seen how injurious, how 
 unjust, how ineffectual, how unnecessary a law it 
 is, I sincerely hope, that the liberal monarch who 
 has done so much for the people, and his new and 
 liberal ministers from whom the people expect so 
 much, will immediately take its repeal into con- 
 sideration, and place the currency of this country 
 henceforth on a basis, which no foreign country 
 can shake, and which will remain unaffected either 
 by war or peace. 
 
 If the advocates for a metallic currency were 
 only to reflect upon the very small degree of ad- 
 vantage they could hope to attain by it, they 
 would give up the measure, independent of other 
 considerations. The late premier's most favor- 
 able estimate made the amount of gold in this 
 country about twenty-eight millions, a quantity 
 which few men will deem too small ; while the late
 
 72 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 Lord Chancellor stated, that the mercantile deal- 
 ings of only twenty-four London bankers amounted 
 in the year to Jifteen hundred millions of pounds. 
 If we add to this the probable amount of other 
 transactions in London, and of those in Liverpool, 
 Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol, Birmingham, and 
 similar towns throughout the kingdom generally ; 
 and to the aggregate add the value of all the agri- 
 cultural produce of the country ; what in compa- 
 rison are the 28 millions of sovereigns, to obtain 
 which, the nation is racked into convulsions? 
 Scarcely a pound a head. So that if a revolution 
 should come, and nothing is more likely to produce 
 it than the continuance of a metallic currency, 
 every man who at present considers himself worth 
 10,000/., 20,000/., 50,000/., 100,000/., or a million 
 of pounds sterling, would have only a single sove- 
 reign for his share, unless in the scramble he 
 should be so fortunate as to get more than his fair 
 proportion, in which case others, who have as good 
 a claim as he, must go without. 
 
 We live in new and eventful times : the world 
 of the present day is different from that of our 
 ancestors ; and what may have done for them is not 
 necessarily the best thing for us. The difficul- 
 ties in which we are placed, as they are new, 
 require also new views to be taken, if we would 
 discover the best means of encountering them. 
 But let it not be forgotten, that if we have novel- 
 ties and difficulties in our situation, we have also 
 new light thrown in for . our guidance, from the
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 73 
 
 experience of past ages, and from the discoveries 
 of later times, — assistance which our predecessors 
 might not have refused, had they been able to 
 command it. Under these circumstances, is it not 
 probable, that, looking back on their actions, we 
 might see some opportunities of improving upon 
 their conduct? Is it possible that they should be so 
 wise before the event, as always to take that course, 
 which to us, who live after it, seems to be the best 
 that could have been taken? If they were so 
 happy as to be on every occasion always perfectly 
 right in what they did, the mantle of their inspira- 
 tion has certainly not fallen upon our shoulders. 
 But let us ask ourselves what benefit they, with 
 transactions in business incomparably so much less 
 in amount, did really derive from a metallic cur- 
 rency, that we should be tempted to adopt it froni 
 their example. 
 
 That great principle of a metallic currency, slow' 
 ntss of increase, to which it owes its value, when 
 viewed in contrast with the rapid increase of the 
 numbers of mankind, to whom individually it will 
 tend to exist in a constantly diminishing ratio, ought 
 to be a reason, with a wise and paternal govern- 
 ment, why payments should be made as much as 
 possible in real money ; and why the taking of 
 usury, that is, any kind of increase in coin on a loan 
 of the precious metals, should be prohibited, ex- 
 cept from strangers. The propriety of such a law 
 cannot be doubted, if we give it a moment's con- 
 sideration. Suppose, for example, that England,
 
 74 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 at the present day, possessed the precious metals 
 in coin to the amount of 28 millions, and having 
 no paper money, were to require, as she does, in- 
 crease on all loans of money at the rate of 5 per 
 cent.,-— every man who had borrowed 100/. ought 
 at the end of the year to be possessed of 105/. in 
 coin, or he cannot pay his debt with increase. One 
 hundred thousand such men, having borrowed 10 
 millions of pounds, ought, at the end of the first 
 year, to be in possession of half a million more ; 
 and in twenty years, not reckoning compound in- 
 terest, their debt, with increase, could not be paid 
 with less than 20 millions of pounds sterling. Now 
 where are these additional 1 millions to be found ? 
 Not in England, certainly — nor abroad, for all 
 other nations take increase too, and their wants 
 are in proportion to their capital. These men, 
 therefore, go on for twenty years paying interest, 
 by which time the whole of the money which 
 they borrowed has been returned to their creditors; 
 but the principal debt has not been paid, and now 
 cannot be ; they are insolvent to that amount. It 
 may, however, be said that their creditors would 
 have taken real money for increase, if they could 
 not get coin. But how can real money be paid 
 under the present system, without the inter- 
 vention of co'ml A further disadvantage natu- 
 rally and inevitably operates against the debtor: 
 — the country becomes more thickly peopled ; 
 young men of enterprize in greater number com- 
 mence business; the money that was sufficient
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 75 
 
 twenty years before to give every man " a belly- 
 full/' will now scarcely suffice to give every man 
 '* a mouthful." Competition lowers profits : men 
 cannot thrive on a decreasing trade ; and he who 
 borrowed when he commenced his career, with 
 every prospect, as he thought, of returning his 
 friends the loan with which he was assisted, finds 
 himself, at the end of twenty years, he knows not 
 how, further removed than ever from the accom- 
 plishment of his wishes. He is in fact ruined by 
 the utter inadequacy of a metallic currency to ex- 
 pand with the growing energies of the country. 
 The history of all ages and countries confirms this 
 statement. 
 
 The inspired lawgiver of the Jews foresaw 
 the impossibility of increase being taken without 
 destroying the liberty and happiness of the peo- 
 ple; and, therefore, he lays down the following 
 laws : — ** If thou lend money to any of my people 
 that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an 
 usurer ; neither shalt thou lay upon him usury."* 
 " If thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen to de- 
 cay with thee ; then shalt thou relieve him : yea, 
 though he be a stranger or a sojourner ; that he 
 may live with thee. Take thou no usury of him or 
 increase : but fear thy God ; that thy brother may 
 
 * Exod. xxii. 25. Our wonder is increased when we reflect, 
 that, with one or two exceptions, all the legislators of the world 
 from that period to the present, have neither profited by his ex- 
 ample, nor grown wise by their own experience.
 
 76 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money 
 upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increased* 
 ** Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother ; 
 usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any 
 thing that is lent upon usury : unto a stranger thou 
 mayst lend upon usury : but unto thy brother thou 
 shalt not lend upon usury. "f A foreigner might 
 be able to pay this increase, and hence the per- 
 mission. He might draw the increase of the money 
 or the victuals from his own country : but how 
 could a poor Israelite do this ? How are his means 
 to increase so as to enable him to repay the debt 
 with interest, either in money or victuals ? So 
 tender is the law of Moses of any thing that may 
 oppress a poor person, it will not permit even a 
 pledge to be kept, the want of which might dis- 
 tress him : "If the man be poor, thou shalt not 
 sleep with his pledge ; in any case thou shalt de- 
 liver the pledge again when the sun goeth down, 
 that he may sleep in his own raiment and bless thee : 
 and it shall be righteousness unto thee before the 
 Lord thy God."t If a man were in such circum- 
 stances, that, to retain his pledge would not de- 
 prive him of anything essential to his comfort, it 
 was then not forbidden to be taken ; but, in such 
 cases, a degree of feeling, which men of the world 
 would condemn as romantic, pervades the charge 
 of the human legislator. " When thou dost lend 
 thy brother any thing, thou shalt not go into his 
 
 * Lev. XXV. 36. f Deut. xxiii. 19. X Deut. xxiv. 22.
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 77 
 
 house to fetch his pledge. Thou shalt stand abroad, 
 and the man to whom thou dost lend, shall bring 
 out the pledge abroad unto thee."* The offering 
 of the pledge was to be a voluntary act of the debtor- 
 There is a passage in the Proverbs which seems to 
 have relation to this case of the feelings of the 
 debtor : "He that blesseth his friend with a loud 
 voice rising early in the morning, it shall be counted 
 a curse to him."t So that according to the He- 
 brew canons, usury even in luords was forbidden, 
 whence Maimonides says: — "Whoso borrowetli 
 of his neighbour, and was not wont in former time 
 to salute him first, it is unlawful for him to salute 
 him first, and I need not say to praise him. "J 
 The supposition in the Proverbs is, that the man 
 who is up so early, and makes his compliment to 
 his friend, with so loud a voice that it cannot be 
 unnoticed, is impelled by a sense of legal obligation 
 to be so forward in testifying his respect ; for which 
 cause, in the judgment of God, the blessing be- 
 comes a curse to him who receives it, because it is 
 usury. 
 
 The Jews were obedient to these ordinances as 
 long as they remained in their own country ; but 
 during their captivity in Babylon, they appear to 
 have imbibed some of the notions of those among 
 whom they were residing ; for when Nehemiah set 
 about restoring the walls of Jerusalem, he was in- 
 
 * Deut. xxiv. 10. t Prov. xxvii. 14. 
 
 t See Ainsworth on Exod. xxii. 25.
 
 78 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 terrupted in his work by complaints of usury, and 
 apprehensions of imprisonment for debt, on the 
 part of the poor. ** There was a great cry of the 
 people and their wives against their brethren the 
 Jews." Some with large families had run in debt 
 for corn, some had mortgaged lands, vineyards, 
 and houses to buy corn, "because of the dearth;" 
 others had borrowed money to pay the king's tri- 
 bute, on security of their lands and vineyards ; 
 and '' lo," said they, "we bring into bondage our 
 sons and our daughters to be servants, and some 
 of our daughters are brought into bondage al- 
 ready ; neither is it in our power to redeem them ; 
 for other men have our lands and vineyards." * 
 The prophet was angry when he heard these 
 words, and said, " I pray you, let us leave off this 
 usury. Restore, I pray you, to them, even this 
 day, their lands, their vineyards, their olive-yards, 
 and their houses, also the hundredth part of the 
 money, and of the corn, the wine, and the oil, that 
 ye exact of them. Then said they, we will restore 
 them, and will require nothing of them ; so will we 
 do as thousayest." — "And the people did according 
 to this promise ;" every creditor gave up the secu- 
 rities he held, receiving neither principal nor inte- 
 rest. This happened about the year 445 B.C., when 
 they were paying " toll, tribute, and custom," to 
 Artaxerxes, King of Persia. The Jews, there- 
 fore, had full experience of the value of money at 
 
 * Nehemiah, chap. v.
 
 [.MPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 79 
 
 that time, yet they nobly abandoned both usury 
 and imprisonment, in compliance with a law 
 which had been promulgated one thousand years 
 before. 
 
 Lycurgus, with wisdom inferior only to that of 
 Moses, and far beyond that of all succeeding le- 
 gislators in what are deemed more enlightened 
 times, saw the true nature of money, and made 
 such ordinances concerning it, that Sparta re- 
 mained a free and happy country as long as she 
 adhered to them. He perceived that money was 
 properly a symbol of wealth, and not its essence : 
 he therefore coined money not only of a cheap 
 and common material, but of a material purposely 
 made unlit for any other use. "He commanded 
 that all gold and silver coin should be cried down, 
 and that only a sort of money made of iron should 
 be current," which iron money, " when it was red 
 hot, and just stamped, they quenched in vinegar, 
 to make it unfit for any other use." * It was thus 
 as pure a symbolic money as our proposed Exche- 
 quer bills ; like these, also, it was made the token 
 of receipt for such real money as the state had oc- 
 casion to require from the people, being from time 
 to time recalled into the treasury and re-issued. 
 While this institution was maintained, " Luxury 
 being by degrees deprived of that which fed and 
 fomented it, was quite starved out, and died away 
 of itself. For the rich had no pre-eminence here 
 
 * Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus.
 
 80 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 over the poor ; and their wealth and abundance, 
 having no opportunity of appearing and boasting 
 of themselves in public, were forced to remain 
 useless at home, a costly prey to the rust and 
 moth. The people having their thoughts taken 
 off from things which are superfluous, became 
 excellent artists in those which were necessary." 
 " I need not tell you," (continues Plutarch) ''that 
 upon the prohibition of gold and silver, all law- 
 suits immediately ceased, for there was no such 
 thing among them as having too much, or want- 
 ing necessaries, but an equality in plenty, and no 
 great trouble to provide what frugality made so 
 cheap. — The city of Lacedsemon (he afterwards 
 adds) continued the chief city of all Greece, both 
 in respect of good government at home, and repu- 
 tation abroad, for the space of five hundred years, 
 merely by their strict observance of Lycurgus's 
 laws ; in all which time there was no manner 
 of alteration made, during the reign of fourteen 
 kings." * 
 
 We have here a lively and a just picture of the 
 good effects of symbolic money when deprived of 
 intrinsic value. If we would contrast it with the 
 opposite system, we have not far to look : Plutarch 
 himself tells us what followed when the ordinances 
 of Lycurgus were disregarded. " In the reign of 
 Agis, money of gold and silver first found a way 
 into Sparta, and together with it came in likewise 
 
 * Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus.
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 81 
 
 a greedy desire and immoderate love of riches." 
 In the life of Agis, he again says more expressly, 
 " When gold and silver, the great debauchers of 
 mankind, had once gained admittance into the 
 Lacedajinonian commonwealth, it was quickly fol- 
 lowed by avarice, baseness of spirit, and all man- 
 ner of frauds in the possession ; by riot, luxury, 
 and effeminacy in the use ;" * and he gives, in the 
 following particulars, a statement which unhappily 
 is not without parallel in the present age. "The 
 Lacedaemonians might date the beginning of their 
 corruption from their conquest of Athens, from 
 which time they began to be full of gold and sil- 
 ver: nevertheless, the Agrarian law established 
 by Lycurgus, remaining in force, (by which every 
 one was obliged to leave his lot or portion of land, 
 together with his house, entirely to his son) a 
 kind of order and equality was thereby main- 
 tained, which still in some degree preserved them 
 from ruin. But one Epitades happening to be 
 ephorus, a man of a factious violent spirit, and on 
 some occasion incensed against his son, he pro- 
 cured a decree, that all men should have liberty to 
 dispose of their land by gift or sale, or by their 
 last will or testament ; which being promoted by 
 him to satisfy a passion of revenge, and through 
 covetousness consented to by others, an excellent 
 institution was abrogated ; the effect \vhereof was, 
 that the monied men coveting to possess the land, 
 
 * Plularch's Life of Agis. 
 G
 
 82 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 the right heirs were by degrees disinherited, and 
 all the wealth being in the hands of a few, the 
 generality were poor and miserable, liberal arts 
 and sciences were neglected, and the city filled 
 with a mean sort of mechanics, always envious 
 and hating the rich : there did not remain above 
 seven hundred of the old Spartan families, of 
 which perhaps one hundred might have estates 
 in land : the rest had neither wealth nor ho- 
 nour, were sluggish and unperforming in war 
 abroad, and ever greedy of novelty and change 
 at home." * 
 
 This state of things led Agis to propose, '* that 
 every one should be free from debts, and that all 
 the lands should be divided into equal portions." 
 The precious metals, be it observed, had intro- 
 duced debts, and the debtors called for a division 
 of property. What has been written, is written 
 for our instruction : " history is philosophy teach- 
 ing by examples." If we will have a metallic 
 currency, we must also take the consequences of a 
 metallic currency, and these in all countries have 
 been distress, division, and spoliation; or if these 
 consequences have been at any time averted, it 
 has been by a re-coinage of the money on a smaller 
 scale, which paUiated the evil it professed to cure, 
 leaving the issue no less certain in the end, and 
 spreading the misery in the interim over a larger 
 surface. By means of symbolic money, ** Lycur- 
 
 * Plutarch's Life of Agis.
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 83 
 
 gus took away both debts and usury," removing 
 all necessity for either. On the other hand, 
 money of intrbisic value, gold and silver, brought 
 in both ; and the result was, that 'in the time of 
 Agis, so intolerable were the debts, and so im- 
 possible to be paid, " that all men were instantly 
 commanded to bring their bonds into the market- 
 place, where, being laid together in a heap, they 
 set fire to them !" A division of the lands would 
 have then also taken place, had not war furnished 
 a convenient pretext for postponing it ; but the 
 delay, and the oppression which that war gave 
 rise to, proved fatal to the life of the well-meaning 
 king. The division, however, was effected by 
 Cleomenes, soon after the death of Agis : set- 
 ting the example himself, he persuaded all the 
 citizens to throw their private fortunes into the 
 public stock. The effect was marvellous : "They 
 had no sooner restored their ancient customs and 
 primitive institution (says Plutarch), than, as if 
 Lycurgus were among them, and at the head of 
 their affairs, they gave signal proofs of their ex- 
 traordinary valour, paid a perfect obedience to 
 their superiors, and by that means obtained for 
 Sparta the pre-eminence in Greece, and recovered 
 the Peloponnesus.'' * 
 
 I have detailed these circumstances, as recorded 
 by Plutarch, the more fully, because of the extra- 
 ordinary testimony they bear to the advantages of 
 
 * Plutarch's Life of Agis. 
 G 2
 
 84 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 a system of symbolic money, and the disadvantages 
 of that which possesses intrinsic value. As far as 
 illustration is required, nothing can be more com- 
 plete. It may, however, be satisfactory to dis- 
 cover, whether the use of coin in other countries 
 warrants the conclusion we have come to from 
 the History of the Jews and Spartans. 
 
 As early as the time of Solon, the Athenians 
 were in the greatest distress and perplexity : 
 " The discord arising from inequality of estates 
 between the poor and the rich was come to the 
 height, the city was in a most desperate condition, 
 and it was thought, that the only thing that could 
 settle it, and free it from these disturbances, must 
 be a tyranny. For all the people were indebted 
 to the rich; and either they tilled their grounds, 
 paying them the sixth part of the produce, or else 
 they engaged their bodies for the debt, and might 
 be seized by their creditors. So some of them 
 were made slaves at home, others were sold to 
 strangers ; some (for no law forbade it) were 
 forced to sell their children, or run their country, 
 to avoid the cruelty of their creditors. But the 
 most and stoutest of the people rose, and encou- 
 raged one another not to suffer things to go thus, 
 but to choose some one man, in whom they could 
 confide for a leader, to free those who were impri- 
 soned for debt, to make a new division of lands, 
 and entirely to change the government." * In 
 
 * Plutarch's Life of Solon.
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 85 
 
 their distress they applied to Solon, the wisest of 
 the Athenians, a man who had neither exacted 
 like the rich, nor become indebted like the poor. 
 Various statements are given of the measures to 
 which he had recourse. Plutarch says, *' The 
 first thing which he settled in the commonwealth 
 was, that all existing debts should be forgiven, 
 and that no man in future should be liable to im- 
 prisonment for debt : though some affirm, that the 
 poor were eased, not by cancelling the debts, but 
 by lowering the interest, and raising the value of 
 their money ; for he made a mina (or pound) which 
 went before for but 75 drachms, pass for 100 ; so 
 that, paying as much in tale as before, but less in 
 weight, those that received it had no loss. But 
 most authors say that this discharge was an en- 
 tire acquittance of all debts at once ; and with 
 this account what he says in his poems best 
 agrees ; for in them Solon values himself, ' that 
 he had removed all the notices of mortgaged land, 
 fixed up in almost every place before ; so that 
 what was bound before was now free ; and of 
 such citizens as had been seized by their creditors 
 for debt, — some he had brought back from other 
 countries, where, by the length of their exile, 
 they had forgotten their native tongue ; and some 
 he had set at liberty, who were in cruel slavery at 
 home.' "* 
 
 It is most likely that both the above accounts 
 
 ' Plutarch's Life of Solon.
 
 86 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 are true; that Solon not only annulled all the 
 debts, but also called in the money of the state, 
 and recoined it less in weight, but of the same 
 nominal value; for without some such measure 
 as this, he could not have obtained a surplus 
 weight of silver sufficient to redeem from slavery 
 those who had been sold into foreign countries ; 
 and a reduction of the size of the coin always ac- 
 companied those other remedies which the exaspe- 
 ration of distress called into action. Of this we 
 have a striking proof in the history of coin among 
 the Romans whose history furnishes us with our 
 next illustration. 
 
 In the reign of Servius Tullius, the Romans are 
 said to have first used coin, which, though stamped, 
 and in that respect the symbol of taxation, pos- 
 sessed real value. A pound weight of bronze, 
 called an ase, was their only coin at this period, 
 and by means of it the taxes were levied. Cheap 
 as this bronze undoubtedly was, it was also a very 
 useful article, as we have already seen ; but in the 
 degree in which it was useful as real money, it 
 became pernicious as com, for this gave it an ad- 
 ventitious value in addition to that which it na- 
 turally possessed. The fatal result arrived, with 
 no less celerity and certainty at Rome, than in the 
 case of Athens. Before one hundred years had 
 elapsed, " the state was torn in pieces by intestine 
 commotions between the patricians and commons, 
 on account, principally, of persons confined for 
 debt. This spirit of discontent, of itself increasing
 
 IMPERFECTION" OF COIN AS MONEY. 87 
 
 daily, was kindled into a flame by the extraor- 
 dinary sutferings of one man. A person far ad- 
 vanced in years, whose appearance denoted severe 
 distress, threw liimself into the Forum ; his garb 
 w£is squalid, and the figure of his person still 
 more shocking, pale and emaciated to the last 
 degree ; besides, a long beard and hair had given 
 his countenance a savage apj)earance : wretched 
 as was the plight in which he appeared, he was 
 known notwithstanding ; several declared that he 
 had been a centurion in the army, and filled with 
 compassion for him, mentioned publicly many 
 other distinctions, which he had obtained in the 
 service ; he himself exhibited scars on his breast, 
 as testimonies of his honourable behaviour in se- 
 veral actions. To those who inquired the cause 
 of that wretched condition, both of his person and 
 apparel (a crowd meantime having assembled 
 round him, which resembled in some degree an 
 assembly of the people), he answered, that, 'while 
 he served in the army during the Sabine war, 
 having not only lost the produce of his farm by 
 the depredations of the enemy, but bis house 
 being burnt, all his goods plundered, his cattle 
 driven ofi', and a tax being imposed at a time so 
 distressing to him, he was obliged to run in debt ; 
 that this debt, aggravated by usury, had con- 
 sumed, first, his farm, which he had inherited 
 from his father and grandfather; then the remain- 
 der of his substance ; and lastly, like a pestilence, 
 had reached his person : that lie had been dragged
 
 88 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 by a creditor, not into servitude, but into a house 
 of correction, or rather a place of execution.' He 
 then shewed his back, disfigured with the marks 
 of fresh stripes : on this sight, after such a re- 
 lation, a great uproar arose ; and the tumult was 
 no longer confined to the Forum, but spread through 
 every part of the city. Those who were in con- 
 finement, and those who had been released from 
 it, forced their way into the public street, and 
 implored the protection of their fellow-citizens; 
 there was no spot which did not afford a volun- 
 tary associate to add to the insurrection ; from all 
 quarters they ran in bodies through every street 
 with great clamour, into the Forum. The situ- 
 ation of the senators who happened to be there at 
 that time, and who fell in the way of this mob, 
 became highly perilous, for they would certainly 
 have proceeded to violence, had not the consuls, 
 Publius Servilius and Appius Claudius, hastily 
 interposed their authority. To them the multi- 
 tude turned their applications, shewed their chains, 
 and other marks of wretchedness ; said, this was 
 what they had deserved ; and, reminding them 
 of their former services in war, and in various en- 
 gagements, insisted, with menaces rather than 
 supplications, that they should assemble the se- 
 nate ; they then placed themselves round the 
 senate-house, that they might act as witnesses 
 and directors of the councils of government."* 
 
 * Livy, E. ii. c. 23.
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 89 
 
 Happily for the patricians, news at this crisis 
 arrived of the Volscians being on their way to 
 attack the city. The commons at first refused to 
 stir, saying, " It was better that all should perish 
 together, than that they should be the only 
 victims ;" but when it was promised them by an 
 edict, that if they would enrol themselves and 
 march against the enemy, no person should hold 
 any Roman citizen in bonds or confinement, so as 
 to prevent his giving in his name to the consuls ; 
 no person should take possession, or make sale, 
 of the goods of a soldier, while upon service, nor 
 detain in custody either his children, or his grand- 
 children ; crowds of them from every part of the 
 city, rushing out of confinement, took the military 
 oath, and principally by their valour, the Vol- 
 scians were driven back with great loss into their 
 own territory. But the commons, nevertheless, 
 were still without sufficient relief from the oppres- 
 sive burthen of their debts ; and though at some 
 times threats, at others persuasions, and often the 
 fortunate concurrence of actual invasions, pre- 
 vented a revolution from taking place, the dissen- 
 sions between the rich and poor produced a 
 state of things scarcely preferable. After a time, 
 the commons were allowed pay out of the public 
 treasury when engaged in warfare, for heretofore 
 they had served without reward : to defray this 
 expense, taxes were levied, which the patricians 
 complained of as oppressive. Again, the debts 
 of the commons a":itate all classes : as a concilia-
 
 90 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 tory measure, M. Manlius proposes, that if the 
 principal sum be paid, whatever has been re- 
 ceived for interest shall be alloM^ed to be deducted 
 from it. Upon this he v^as charged with aspiring 
 to the regal power, and imprisoned ; but from fear 
 of the people, who had put on mourning for him 
 and shewed great excitement, he was liberated 
 by the senate. On his trial, he produced nearly 
 400 persons, to whom he had lent money without 
 interest, or whose goods or persons he had re- 
 deemed, proofs that what he had recommended 
 to others, he had practised himself ; but the pa- 
 tricians were too much interested in the pre- 
 servation of their property to yield either to his 
 arguments or example : he was held to be too 
 dangerous a member of the state to live, and ac- 
 cordingly they hurled him from the Tarpeian 
 rock. At this time, one half of the Common- 
 wealth was said to be in debt to the other. In 
 the year, B.C. 374, to so extreme a height had 
 the misery from this cause arisen, that redress 
 could no longer be evaded : laws, therefore, were 
 passed to authorise, in the first place, the de- 
 duction of ititerest, as far as it had been paid, 
 from the principal, granting the debtor three 
 years to pay the remainder in, by equal instal- 
 ments ; and secondly, to prevent any person from 
 holding more than 500 acres of land.. In the 
 year 322, B. C. imprisonment for debt was abo- 
 lished. Soon after this, a great alteration was 
 made in the value of the ase : it was reduced in
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 91 
 
 weight from lib. to 2 oz. and in value from 1*. to 
 2d. of our money. Notwithstanding this altera- 
 tion, which increased the quantity of the coin, so 
 great was the distress for money, owing to the 
 Carthaginian War, that private persons supplied 
 stores of clothing, corn, &c. on condition of being 
 paid for them at its termination : thus the Romans 
 had a national debt, in its origin like our own. 
 Like us, too, they had their loyalty loan : rowers 
 were wanted for the fleet ; the commons, unable 
 to pay for them, represented that they had al- 
 ready parted with all the silver and brass they 
 could get to obtain the rowers at present em- 
 ployed, and to furnish the annual supplies ; where- 
 upon the senators sent into the treasury nearly all 
 their gold, and silver, and brass, and their example 
 being imitated by the equestrians, was at last fol- 
 lowed by the commons. A prodigious quantity of 
 gold and silver immediately after this, was brought 
 into Rome, from the plunder of New Carthage ; 
 but in less than five years, so scarce again was 
 money, that the state was obliged to sell part of 
 the Campanian territory, to purchase means for 
 carrying on the war. In the year B. C. 204, the 
 money due to private persons on the war above 
 mentioned, was ordered to be returned at three 
 instalments : two of these were with difficulty 
 paid, though a tax was levied on the sale of salt 
 to discharge them : to effect the third, a com- 
 promise was made, by selling to the national cre- 
 ditor those public lands which were within 50
 
 92 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 miles of Rome, on condition of his paying a quit- 
 rent of one ase per annum. I need not trace the 
 subject further : the embarrassments of the state 
 maybe judged of by the fact, that enormous as 
 the sums of money were which had been brought 
 into Rome by the success of its armies, the one 
 pound ase, of bronze, was gradually reduced till 
 (A. D. 68) it did not exceed the twenty-fourth 
 part of its original weight and value. 
 
 Throughout this sketch of the progress of Ro- 
 man money, from the rise of the empire to its de- 
 cline and fall, we may trace the leading features 
 of that career of misery which England is now 
 pursuing, and is destined to complete, unless the 
 means are resorted to which happily offer them- 
 selves, and which, if promptly adopted, will effect 
 her emancipation. Like the plebeians of Rome, 
 our lower classes are in a state of high excite- 
 ment, — they agitate the question of the abolition 
 of debts, the division of lands, the appropriation 
 of church property, and the sale of the public 
 domains: " the thought is father to the deed." If 
 we avert these evils by a reduction of the metallic 
 pound, the work of plunder is carried on by sap 
 instead of storm ; but not the less will it conduce 
 to the immediate ruin of many, and the final over- 
 throw of all who depend on 'property. Niebuhr, 
 the profoundest authority of the present day, jus- 
 tifies such an infraction of the coin, and augurs 
 the ruin of the landed proprietors of England from 
 their endeavours to prevent it. " If a state (he
 
 IMPERI F.CTION OF COIN AS -MONEY. 93 
 
 says) has fallen into the unfortunate system of 
 paper money, and this sinks in comparison with 
 silver; then, should a juncture of favourable cir- 
 cumstances furnish the means of re-establishing a 
 metallic currency, it is altogether absurd, nay, 
 purely disastrous, to make the metal resume its 
 place with its standard unchanged, and the sums 
 in all contracts abide by their nominal amount, 
 while it is impossible to keep up prices at the 
 height where they stood, at the time of the paper 
 circulation.* Nay if, even without paper money, 
 all prices have, for a course of years, been forced 
 up by extraordinary circumstances far above the 
 mean of those which prevailed during the pre- 
 ceding generations ; if the expenses and burthens 
 of the country have increased at the same rate, 
 and then at length this feverish condition sub- 
 sides, and every thing drops down for a conti- 
 nuance to the lowest average prices ; in such a 
 case the only hope of safety lies in a proportionate 
 reduction of the standard : and to this result com- 
 
 * " In the years from 1740 to 1750, corn in England sold for 
 about three-fitths of the price it had stood at sixty years earlier : 
 in France, the prices at the two epochs were nominally equal ; 
 because the standard had been altered in the proportion of thir- 
 teen to twenty. Supposing, now, that the landed property in the 
 two countries had been generally burthened with mortgages, 
 thousands, who in the former must have been ruined, would have 
 been saved in the latter ; and that not only among the proprietors 
 who would have retained their inheritance, but even among the 
 mortgagees." — 'Note by M. Niebuhr.
 
 94 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 mon sense led men in former times, whereas 
 theory and delusion now cry out against it."* 
 
 M. Niebuhr's view is that of a calm philoso- 
 phic historian, and his inference will be proved 
 to be correct, in the ruin of all the landed pro- 
 prietors and fundholders of this country, if the pre- 
 sent measure of cash payments be persisted in. 
 We see the tendency of such a measure too clearly 
 manifested at present to have any doubt as to the 
 result, ^ut the alternative he proposes is not less 
 fatal. Look at France. At a certain period, her 
 livre was of the weight and purity of our pound, 
 each consisting of a pound weight of silver. 
 While ours has declined to 20 shillings, some- 
 what less than a third its original value, (one 
 pound in weight being now coined into 66 shil- 
 lings,) the livre of France has dwindled down to ten 
 pence. And what has been the security which she 
 has purchased by a series of frauds, as they may 
 be justly called, on the currency, every change 
 having altered the value of all existing contracts ? 
 Le Blanc's Traite Historique is full of the most 
 melancholy records of the effects of these changes, 
 records which make one feel indignant, that the 
 property and happiness of a great nation should, 
 for so many centuries, have remained exposed to 
 the continual ravages of these unprincipled ordon- 
 nances pour les monnoyes. Distress preceded, and 
 distress followed them : at one time the debtor, at 
 
 * Niebuhr's Roman History, vol. i. p. 455. Edit. 1831.
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 95 
 
 another the creditor was injured ; all classes suf- 
 fered in their turn. The practice of departing 
 from the standard began as early as the time of 
 Charlemagne. Le Blanc thinks it remained un- 
 impaired till the middle of the 12th century ; but 
 in this I believe he is mistaken. One reason for 
 my thinking so is, that in 794, Charlemagne issued 
 an edict, threatening punishment to those of his 
 subjects who refused his new coin, ** if it had but 
 the impress of his name, was of pure silver and 
 full weight."* If by these terms we suppose that 
 his '* new denier s'' were as heavy as the old and 
 of equal purity, why should there require an or- 
 dinance to enforce their circulation ? We always 
 attach the idea of intrinsic value to coin, and ima- 
 gine that the difficulty consists not in finding men 
 willing to take it in exchange for their commodi- 
 ties, but in finding others able to give it. This 
 was the way with us when our money was of full 
 weight and purity : but when it declined from 
 either, then certainly threats and punishment be- 
 came necessary, and our own history has suffi- 
 cient of them. The compulsion was proportionate 
 to the debasement. James II., " by the threat 
 of the halter, and the aid of the soldiers, was 
 enabled to make 10/. sterling, out of only four 
 pennyworth of metal, the remaining 9/. 19^. Sd. 
 being all derived from royal power. "f Now as 
 
 Le Blanc, p. 84. 
 t Money System of England, p. 56.
 
 96 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 Charlemagne was forced to employ the same 
 power, we have a right to infer that he was 
 obliged to resort to it because his coin also wanted 
 something in weight and purity, which that power 
 was to supply ; and the defect in this instance 
 was probably in the weight. So averse, however, 
 were the people, for some reason or other, to the 
 reception of the new coin, that fines and flogging 
 were necessary to induce them to receive it. If a 
 free man refused it, he was fined for each offence 
 15*. A servant doing so forfeited the article for 
 which it was tendered, if it were his own ; or his 
 master paid the fine ; or his bare back suffered a 
 public flagellation at the whipping-post.* These 
 are singular proceedings in case the coin was not 
 altered; and no less unaccountable if, when al- 
 tered, it possessed that intrinsic value, which the 
 advocates of a metallic currency assert is at all 
 times the condition of its circulation. I suspect, 
 from these floggings, that intrinsic value was less 
 regarded than the convenience of the king ; and 
 that he not only issued money on his own terms, 
 but forced the people to take it whether they 
 liked it or not. 
 
 The son and successor of Charlemagne, Louis 
 le Debonnaire, imitated the example of his father 
 in reducing the coin, and in providing for its ready 
 acceptance, by increasing the fine to 60*., and 
 determining the flogging to 60 lashes. Such of 
 
 * Le Blanc, p. 84.
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 97 
 
 the old money as was still in existence he for- 
 bade to be circulated on any consideration ; but 
 with all his efforts to suppress this and to recom- 
 mend his new coin, he was obliged six years 
 after to repeat the edict for the fine and the 
 flogging.* Charles the Bald, in 874, renews the 
 injunction, no doubt because he also had issued 
 ** deniers of a new coinage." With a degree of 
 caution, however, which speaks loudly of the way 
 in which the punishment had formerly been car- 
 ried into effect, he orders that the blows shall not 
 be given with a heavy club, whereby the delinquent 
 was injured in his bodily health and strength, 
 but with rods upon his naked body. \ What 
 were the specific reductions made by each of 
 these monarchs in the quantity of pure silver con- 
 tained in his coins, it is not easy to say ; but we 
 find that, at the commencement of the 12th cen- 
 tury, the pound of silver was coined into sixty 
 shillings, whereas, previous to the time of Charle- 
 magne, it was coined but into twenty ; and thus 
 the reduction in 300 years (A.D. 800 to 1100) was 
 not much less than that which has been witnessed 
 in England from the Conquest to the present day. 
 Another argument for carrying back the first 
 deterioration of French money to the time of 
 
 • Le Blanc, p. 98. 
 
 t Non cum grosso fuste, sed nudi cum virgis vapulent. Le 
 Blanc, p. 115. — He had previously ordered that they should be 
 branded in the forehead with a heated denier, but so as not to 
 cause death. 
 
 H
 
 98 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 Charlemagne is, that at the commencement of the 
 Carlovingian dynasty, a change was made in the 
 manner of collecting the revenues of the crown, 
 as well as the sums given to the Roman power in 
 support of the Christian church. 
 
 Under the first race, the king was ostensibly the 
 giver of the benevolence, if such it could be called, 
 which was raised directly from the people, who of 
 course felt the weight of it. Under the second 
 race, the payment was apparently not so great to 
 the head of the church, but in reality it fell much 
 heavier on the people, owing to the different mode 
 in which the collection was effected. For besides 
 the burden of the direct payment of the Peter's 
 pence, an indirect injury was done to the inferior 
 classes both by the state, the nobles, and those 
 heads of the religious houses, to whom the king 
 conceded from time to time the privilege of coin- 
 ing money. Whenever he wished to increase his 
 revenue, he was accustomed to call in the coin 
 and re-issue it in a less size, but at its former 
 value, to make the proceeds equal to his necessi- 
 ties. The nobility and religious houses could do 
 no less than diminish the value of their coins in the 
 same degree, agreeably to the ordinance of the 
 king. Then, when the nominal amount of rents 
 was raised in proportion, so as to bring in the 
 same quantity of real money as before, the next 
 step taken by the king and followed by those who 
 enjoyed the privilege of coining, was to restore 
 the value by a recoinage, which placed the people
 
 IMPEKFECTION OF COIX AS MONKV. 99 
 
 in a predicament similar to that in which the Eng- 
 lish nation is fixed at this day. This practice, 
 which was resorted to whenever the necessities of 
 the crown appeared to demand it, continued for 
 centuries, being more or less frequent as war or 
 peace prevailed : at times producing such a height 
 of distress as to drive the people to insurrection, 
 wherein great numbers were slain. Worn out at 
 length by their sufferings, they petitioned Charles 
 VII. that he would take from them their property 
 at once by tallages and aids, a means somewhat 
 resembling our property-tax, and abandon these 
 changes of the coin. He consented to this,* and 
 from that time we hear of no attempts to restore, 
 what is usually called, the standard of value ; but 
 the deterioration of the currency went on, and at 
 so prodigious a rate, that from the year 1450 to 
 1680 the marc of silver, which then represented 
 11. iOs. rose, by a series of uninterrupted reduc- 
 tions in the weight of the coin, till it represented 
 the sum of 29/. 10*. As this, on the whole, was 
 favourable to the productive classes, who found 
 by every reduction of the coin their condition for 
 a time more easy, it kept them quiet : but the 
 receivers of fixed incomes were grievously injured, 
 
 * J'ay trouve dans un ancien manuscrit, qui est environ de ce 
 tems-1^, que le peuple se ressouvenant de Tincommodite, et des 
 dommages infinis qu'il avoit re^fis de I'afFoiblissement des monnoyes, 
 et du frequent changement du prix du marc d'or et d'argent, 
 pria le Roy de quitter ce droit, consentant qu'il imposa its 
 Tailles et les Aydes, ce qui leur fut accorde. Le Blanc, p. 76. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 and if they were not numerous or powerful enough 
 to prevent the mischief which the monarch for his 
 own relief was willing to inflict on them, it does 
 not make him the less a tyrant, nor the system 
 less iniquitous than that which he pursued before. 
 
 Philip le Bel was the first king of France who 
 made a regular system of altering the value of 
 his coin. Le Blanc says of him : — " The serious 
 wars which this prince was engaged in with his 
 neighbours having exhausted his finances, obliged 
 him to deteriorate his coin in order to have money. 
 This was a ready and certain way ; but of such 
 pernicious consequences, that it placed the state 
 in imminent peril. Philip le Bel was the first, as 
 far as we know, who availed himself of these dan- 
 gerous means, which have ruined his fame, and 
 obtained for him the name of the counterfeit coiner "^ 
 To make this measure the less obnoxious, he was 
 exceedingly bountiful in his promises. He bound 
 himself by letters, which bear date the month of 
 May, 1295, to indemnify all those who should receive 
 his reduced coin ; and for this purpose he assigns 
 over all his own property, that of his successor, 
 and in particular all the revenues of his kingdom. f 
 
 To encourage the king in his professed inten- 
 tion of speedily restoring the coin to its former 
 standard, Pope Boniface IX. granted him a year's 
 income from those prebends which should become 
 vacant by death in the kingdom of France, and 
 
 * Le Blanc, p. 202. f Id. p. 212.
 
 lAIPERlECTlON OI COIN AS MONEY. 101 
 
 the tenths for two years of all benefices : but the 
 clergy stept in and resisted the execution of this 
 bull ; reminding the king that he had promised to 
 indemnify, out of his own revenues, those who 
 were compelled to take his base money. What 
 was the consequence? As the king himself did 
 not choose to part with his own revenues to supply 
 the funds required for the purpose, and the clergy 
 were not willing to bear the loss, it fell, as may be 
 supposed, on the people. The marc of silver which 
 had been gradually coined, by successive altera- 
 tions, into 6 U. 66^. 68,?. 70,y. 75s. 78s. 85s. SSs. 
 I04s. I20s. I25s. I34s. [35s. U5s. [50s. and 
 170,9. all in the space of eleven years, was sud- 
 denly restored, A. D. 1306, to 55*. 6d., being 
 what it stood at in 1285. The consequence was 
 a " frightful insurrection at Paris. The people 
 wanted to pay their debts in the old money, having 
 no means of obtaining the new except at a consi- 
 derable sacrifice. The rich, on their part, exacted 
 payment in the restored coin. — Having lost all 
 their property, the people, in despair, plundered 
 the house of the master of the mint, the supposed 
 author of the measure, broke into the palace, in- 
 sulted the king, and committed all the excesses of 
 which an enraged people were capable."* Order 
 being restored, and the offenders punished, it was 
 decreed, that three deniers of the old coin should 
 pass current for o?ie of the new. 
 
 * Le Blanc, p. 218.
 
 102 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 In 1310, the king again impaired the coin, at 
 which the people murmured, being now well ap- 
 prised of what might follow. In 1313 it was again 
 restored ** which was a great loss to the people, 
 and particularly to the merchants, many of whom 
 were ruined."* 
 
 These frequent alterations of the coin contri- 
 buted more, says Le Blanc, to the overthrow of 
 the kingdom, than all the efforts of the English. 
 Dante, who was the contemporary of Philip le 
 Bel, alludes to them in the following lines : — 
 
 There shall be read the woe, that he doth work, 
 With his adulterate money, on the Seine. 
 
 So frequent were the changes after this, that, 
 incredible as it may seem, from Philip le Bel to 
 Louis XIV., a period of 400 years, the standard 
 was altered more than 235 times. We may have 
 some conception of their effects from the follow- 
 ing table :t but it should be observed that the de- 
 terioration was gradual, the return always sudden. 
 
 A Marc of silver, two-thirds 
 
 of a pound weight, 
 
 was coined 
 
 
 A. D. f. s. 
 
 d. 
 
 In 
 
 1283, into 2 14 
 
 
 
 After 17 changes, 
 
 1305, into 8 10 
 
 
 
 
 1306, into 2 15 
 
 6 
 
 After 15 changes, 
 
 1328, into 5 11 
 
 
 
 
 1330, into 2 18 
 
 
 
 After 13 changes, 
 
 1342, into 13 10 
 
 
 
 
 1343, into 3 4 
 
 
 
 * Le Blanc, p. 221. 
 
 t From Le Blanc.
 
 IMPF.RFKCTIOX OK COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 103 
 
 
 A. D. 
 
 
 
 £. 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 After 8 changes, 
 
 1347, 
 
 
 into 
 
 7 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 1348, 
 
 
 into 
 
 4 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 After 19 changes, 
 
 1351, 
 
 
 into 
 
 14 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 
 1352, 
 
 
 into 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 After 10 changes. 
 
 1353, 
 
 (A 
 
 ugust) 
 
 13 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 (October) 
 
 4 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 After 6 changes. 
 
 1354, 
 
 (September) 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 > 
 
 (N 
 
 ovember) 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 After 10 changes. 
 
 1355, 
 
 
 into 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1356, 
 
 
 into 
 
 5 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 After 10 changes. 
 
 1358, 
 
 (A. 
 
 J gust) 
 
 13 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 (Same month) 
 
 6 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 After 21 changes. 
 
 1359, 
 
 
 into 
 
 102 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1361, 
 
 
 into 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 
 
 After 5 changes, 
 
 1420, 
 
 
 into 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1421, 
 
 
 into 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 
 
 After 16 changes. 
 
 1429, 
 
 
 into 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1430, 
 
 
 into 
 
 6 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 After 44 changes, 
 
 1680, 
 
 
 into 
 
 29 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 And it is now coined 1 833, 
 
 
 into about 
 
 55 
 
 
 
 
 
 While with us the same weight is coined into 21. 4s. 
 
 If this is to be our course, in imitation of the 
 example of France, we shall have one advantage 
 at least, which the people of that unhappy country 
 had not : we can see our fate in hers beforehand, 
 and prepare to submit to it, without flattering our- 
 selves that it may be avoided ; but let us not fancy 
 that by yielding to a temporizing policy like this, 
 we can avert a revolution. If France is to be our 
 guide, we shall assuredly have, in due time, our 
 period for the abolition of debts, the division of 
 lands, the spoliation of the church, and the sale of 
 the national domains ; and like her we sliall find 
 ourselves, after all, as much embarrassed to keep
 
 104 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 up our establishments, and to find employment 
 for the peopie, with the deteriorated currency to 
 which we shall be brought, as we are now to main- 
 tain either the one or the other with the richer cir- 
 culating medium that we at present possess. But 
 we have one comfort; our course will be run 
 much more speedily than hers ; the enormous 
 amount of our national debt, and of our annual 
 taxation, into which we have been betrayed if we 
 are now to meet both in a metallic currency, — 
 these, in conjunction with the irritable feelings of 
 Englishmen when they think they have been ill- 
 used, will carry this nation in a few years, or 
 months, to a crisis, which France was centuries in 
 reaching. 
 
 I am unwilling to render this representation of 
 the imperfection of coin longer than is needful, 
 and shall therefore refer the reader to the " View 
 of the Money System of England from the Con- 
 quest," for a rapid but powerful sketch of the 
 effects of such money in this country. Though we 
 have escaped apparently better than others, yet 
 the exposure of the manner in which Englishmen 
 have been treated, from the time when Will. II. 
 plundered them, under the pretext of sending 
 them abroad to fight his battles — the history of 
 the bullying and juggling which has been practised 
 towards them from that period to the present, in all 
 that relates to the maintenance of our coin, will be 
 alone sufficient to convince every humane and re- 
 flecting mind, that it is a system which ought no
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 105 
 
 longer to be tolerated, if it admits of a remedy. 
 And what have we gained after all ? Our quondam 
 pound of silver is less than one third what it was ; 
 our modern shilling is less than an ancient groat, 
 yet we are in as much embarrassment as ever ! 
 Numbers of men suffered misery before these re- 
 ductions were carried into effect ; and many more 
 are now suffering, and are destined to suffer, whe- 
 ther the diminution is to be continued further, or 
 whether it is to be resisted at this stage, — though 
 why at this stage rather than at an earlier, none 
 can tell. If the reduction which has been made 
 did good, we shall be at a loss to find arguments 
 against the extension of the principle ; if it was in- 
 jurious, why did we resort to it without necessity; 
 and if it was necessary, what stronger condemna- 
 tion can be given of the system, than that it creates 
 a necessity for doing that which is injurious ? In 
 every point of view it is indefensible. 
 
 One of the most tyrannical of these measures 
 occurred so lately as in the reign of Elizabeth, 
 who is applauded as the great restorer of our coin, 
 though with little reason ; her chief merit having 
 consisted in the following unjust proceeding. The 
 shilling had been restored in the latter years of 
 Edward VI. so far, that from containing only two- 
 pennyworth of fine silver, it was made of the value 
 of eightpence in pure metal. To accomplish this, 
 the people had been grievously injured mid pluji- 
 dered; for all the means of creating that increase of 
 metal in the coin had been drawn from Ihcni : in
 
 106 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 other words, they lost by the tale of the coin what 
 had been obtained in the weight, so that instead of 
 four light shillings being in circulation, they had 
 only one, which was worth the four. How that 
 would disorder all their contracts we can readily 
 comprehend from present experience. On the 
 morning of March 4, 1562, a proclamation sud- 
 denly appeared, stating that from the first hour of 
 that day, all the current coin should pass for two- 
 thirds its nominal value ; for example, that the 
 shilling — which had been issued for twelve pence, 
 had been reduced to two-pence, and had been 
 afterwards brought up to the value of eight-pence 
 as compared with the shilling of more than a cen- 
 tury before — that this shilling should not be 
 reckoned in account thenceforth at more than 
 eight-pence. By this measure the queen flattered 
 herself that she had made the coin equal to what it 
 was in the days of her grandfather : but no idea 
 could be more fallacious ; for the coin remained, of 
 course, the same in weight and purity as before, and 
 even its name was not changed, though it was ordered 
 to pass for eight-pence in account. Nor could any 
 thing be more oppressive ; for all men who owed 
 money were compelled to pay one-third more than 
 they owed, and this after they had been made to 
 suffer so much for what was called the restoring of 
 the coin from two-pence to eight-pence. Lenders 
 of money, it is true, were gainers ; pensioners of 
 all classes and the military benefited : even land- 
 lords profited for a time, though it was but for a
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 107 
 
 time ; for as soon as new prices could be fixed, and 
 new contracts could be entered upon, terms were 
 made with reference to the ability of the people to 
 pay or to fulfil them. The measure had no effect, 
 except that of injuring those who, from their en- 
 gagements, were unable to protect themselves : it 
 had as little merit as any other means for the par- 
 tial destruction of a man's property, except that it 
 did not annihilate ; it merely transferred the pro- 
 perty of the poor man to the rich. 
 
 The following Table exhibits the principal 
 changes which have taken place in the value of 
 English money. 
 
 The pound weight of silver — 
 
 A. D. £ s. d. 
 
 1 WilHam I. 1066, was coined into 10 
 
 •28 Edward I. 1300, 1 3 
 
 18 III. 1344, 1 2 6 
 
 25 1351, 1 5 
 
 ISHenrylV. 1412, 110 
 
 4 Edward IV. 1467, 1 17 6 
 
 18 Henry VIII. 1527, 2 5 
 
 34 1543, 2 10 
 
 36 1545, 4 16 
 
 37 1546, 7 4 
 
 4 Edward VI. 1550, 14 8 
 
 6 1552, 3 5 
 
 4 Elizabeth, 1562, 3 
 
 43 1601, 3 2 
 
 56 George III. 1816, 3 6 
 
 These details are sufficient to convince us, that 
 coin is made valuable by the ivill of the sovereign,
 
 108 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 and that he may issue it for what amount, and to 
 what extent he pleases. The people have no re- 
 dress; they must take it as he decrees. The 
 same piece of money which to-day passes for one 
 shilling, to-morrow may pass for two-pence or 
 for two shillings, according as the monarch finds it 
 his interest to raise or to lower its representative 
 value. Le Roy le veut, as the old French phrase ex- 
 presses it ; and that is enough. Arbitrary power is 
 the true secret of the value of coin : the sole way 
 in which the Crown can enjoy advantage from 
 its prerogative of coining money, is in causing that 
 money to pass for more than its intrinsic value. 
 
 Coin is the proper and inevitable form of money 
 in an absolute monarchy. As the king is irrespon- 
 sible, he can issue it at whatever weight, and in 
 whatever quantity he pleases ; nor can the people, 
 having no voice in the state, protect themselves 
 from the consequences. They are, in fact, under 
 the greater obligation to him, if what he issues 
 happen to possess any intrinsic value, for it might 
 have none. Coin is an engine of despotism, the 
 badge of slavery ; for it is a species of taxation, by 
 which the people are eased of their property with- 
 out being consulted, without appeal, or power of 
 prevention. They may receive it with suspicion, 
 but they cannot — they dare not refuse it. This is 
 the sort of money, which an enslaved people must 
 have ; and yet this is the currency which so many 
 Englishmen desire to possess, and are ruining 
 themselves to obtain.
 
 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 109 
 
 There are, however, those who say, that Eng- 
 land at present cannot be suffering from the want 
 of money, since there is abundance of it without 
 employment, which any one can have on giving 
 proper security ; and that, if he cannot give this, 
 it is an infallible proof that he ought not to be 
 trusted. The parties, who make this declaration 
 about the abundance of money, consider it a 
 certain argument that the country is in a pros- 
 perous state. Let them look into the history of 
 other countries, and they will see that no surer 
 sign can be discovered of impending ruin. When 
 money accumulates in the hands of a few, and 
 is not well distributed among the many, the body 
 politic is diseased. An unequal circulation of 
 money, like an unequal circulation of the blood, 
 tends to the breaking up of the whole system. 
 When the Roman people generally were in want 
 of money, and the coin had become diminished 
 from one pound to half an ounce, the largest for- 
 tunes were accumulated by private persons, even 
 by such as had been bond slaves : fortunes to 
 which those acquired in England are scarcely 
 comparable ; for what are we to think of a man, no 
 other way remarkable, who, though he had sus- 
 tained severe losses by the civil wars, left at his 
 death, 41 IG slaves belonging to his retinue, 3600 
 yoke of oxen, 257,000 head of other cattle, and 
 more than 60 millions of Roman sesterces, or 
 750,000/. sterling. That coin and interest caused 
 these enormous accumulations, we have the ex-
 
 110 IMPERFECTION OF COIN AS MONEY. 
 
 press testimony of Pliny.* Unhappily for Eng- 
 land, we have fortunes of the same kind here, and 
 almost to the same amount, accumulated by means 
 almost as reprehensible. 
 
 But if large private fortunes are no sign of ge- 
 neral prosperity, neither is unemployed capital 
 any proof that trade is saturated with money. So 
 long as every man's stock is producing less than it 
 cost, which is the case almost universally at pre- 
 sent, it would be folly in any one to borrow money 
 for the purpose of employing it in business : his 
 obvious policy would be, and is, to abstract as 
 much of his own capital from trade as he is able. 
 
 * Foenus hoc fecit, nummusque percussus. Plin. B. 33. c. 47.
 
 ill 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY, AS A CIR- 
 CULATING MEDIUM. 
 
 As the two grand defects of coin are its incapability 
 of increase, according to the wants of the age and 
 country in which it is used, and its utter inadequacy 
 to represent that quantity of real money which must 
 be sacrificed for it, at a period of panic, or during 
 a revolution : so, the perfection of symbolic money 
 consists in its capability of e.rpansion or contraction, 
 according to the necessities of the time, and in its 
 complete competency to represent at all periods any 
 quantity of real money, at a constantly uniform 
 rate, without any chance of* loss from a panic or a 
 revolution. 
 
 Being the instrument of taxation, symbolic 
 money, if we have our rights, must be issued to the 
 amount of the taxes to be raised. If the annual 
 demands of the state are 50 millions of real money, 
 that same quantity of symbolic money cannot fail 
 to be in existence ; because, for every one pound 
 of real money abstracted, there will remain with 
 the party from whom it was taken one pound of 
 symbolic money, as a token of receipt. At such a 
 time^ therefore, as the present, the country would 
 abound with symbolic money ; yet it tcould not be
 
 112 PERFPXTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 in excess^ because for every one pound Exchequer 
 bill the government must have received the value, 
 and so the bill could be in existence only till the 
 Exchequer reclaimed and cancelled it, as having 
 discharged its duty. To whatever amount taxes 
 are demanded by the state, to that amount, and 
 that only, will bills be in circulation. When taxes 
 are reduced, the reduction of bills will inevitably 
 follow : with half the amount of taxes we shall 
 have but half the amount of bills. If, on the other 
 hand, twice the amount of our present taxation 
 should be deemed necessary, we shall have twice 
 the amount of bills in circulation. Taxation, and 
 the bills which represent it, must \x?iv ^ 'pari 'passu ; 
 and though with colli this cannot be effected, s'ym- 
 bolic money will adapt itself to the occasion with 
 the nicest accuracy of adjustment. 
 
 Lest any one should suppose that these Exche- 
 quer bills have any affinity with that paper money 
 which was issued in France under the title of as- 
 signats, I will here explain the difference. The 
 assignats were an irresponsible issue of paper money 
 capable of being carried to any excess, and having 
 no immediate reference to the taxes, for which in- 
 deed it was not sure they would be taken by the 
 power which issued them, still less by that which, 
 in its turn, might succeed to the government. Here- 
 in, therefore, the people had no security, that if 
 they gave 7^eal money for this paper one day, it 
 would not be useless the next, when they should 
 again have to give more real money for another
 
 AS A CTRCUl.ATIXG MEDIUM. Il3 
 
 issue, itself to be superseded by a third, and so 
 on. The nation was in the situation of a tenant, 
 occupying an estate to which there are several 
 claimants : if he pays rent to one, he knows not 
 but that he may be compelled to pay it soon after 
 to another. The safest way is not to pay it to any, 
 till the law determines which is the rightful heir. 
 In this situation the French nation found itself, 
 and very naturally looked upon the as,sig?iat system 
 with great jealousy. — But in England, where there 
 is no dispute about the right to the throne, there 
 can be no hazard in taking a receipt for the taxes 
 from the government : the validity of the symbolic 
 money thus issued is therefore unquestionable. 
 And with respect to the possibility of its being 
 issued in excess, we have the best of checks 
 against such an occurrence even were it designed ; 
 for the amount of annual taxation to be allowed is 
 determined by parliament, and permission would 
 be given when that allowance was made to issue 
 tokens of receipt to the amount. If it should still 
 be thought, that to entrust any set of ministers 
 with the power of issuing such receipts is impru- 
 dent, lest they should all combine to exceed their 
 commission and deceive the country, (a practice, 
 against which the numerous checks instituted 
 at the Exchequer ought to be an effectual guard) 
 then let other more efficient means be devised : 
 but while, as at present. Exchequer bills to the 
 amount of many millions are suffered to be pre- 
 pared by the appointed authorities, 1 conceive 
 
 I
 
 114 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 that the public would have no reason to be dissa- 
 tisfied, if those authorities were commissioned to 
 exercise their powers on a more extensive scale. 
 To render the accounts more clear, the nature of 
 the service, and the sum-total granted for it, with 
 the date of the issue, may be specified on the face 
 of the bill ; and at appointed periods, statements 
 of the amount of bills issued, of the amount re- 
 turned in taxes, and of the balance in circulation, 
 should be submitted to parliament. 
 
 Readiness of conversion into every kind of pro- 
 perty is the second quality which symbolic money 
 possesses in perfection. In ordinary times, all 
 men will be glad to exchange their various com- 
 modities for this money, to receive it for rent, or 
 for services of every description ; because all know 
 that not a pound exists which will not be wanted 
 by the government, and that every man will be 
 called upon to produce and pay to the collector 
 that quantity of it which his assessment to the 
 taxes requires him to redeem. The necessity of 
 being prepared for this call every quarter of a year, 
 operating on all classes, will give to the circula- 
 tion of symbolic money its proper velocity, so that 
 all people in turn will have the opportunity of 
 meeting with it ; and while each is enabled to ob- 
 tain his proportion, none will be likely to obtain 
 too much. 
 
 But what effect, it may be asked, will an extend- 
 ed issue of money have upon prices ? — Value being 
 that quality in a thing which renders it absolutely
 
 AS A CrRCUr.ATING MEDIUM. 115 
 
 estimable, can undergo no modification by the exist- 
 ence of a greater or less degree of symbolic money ; 
 hut pj'ice being relative to the quantity of money in 
 circulation, will fluctuate as that quantity fluctu- 
 ates. This is experienced every day under our 
 present system, when, from a greater or less de- 
 gree of money in the market, independent of greater 
 or less demand, prices rise or fall. These J^uc- 
 tuations in the quantity of money occur so often, 
 and are so easily produced by the machinations 
 of artful men, that they are regarded as aftbrding 
 one means of acquiring a fortune, among others of 
 a like gambling character, in this desperate age. 
 Prices, therefore, would not remain stationary, if 
 symbolic money increased or lessened in quantity; 
 but the variations would not deserve the name of 
 Jiuctuations : they would be effected gradually by 
 the increase or diminution of taxation, so that 
 all would have notice of them, and none could be 
 deceived in making his engagements : in fact, so 
 slow would be the real change in price, that, ex- 
 cept by comparison of distant years, it would not 
 attract attention. Value will always be unaff'ected 
 by any circumstances connected with money : a 
 fat ox will always be worth more than a lean 
 one, though the price of the latter should, at one 
 time, be higher than that of the former at another. 
 A country is never embarrassed in its affairs on 
 account of any difference in the value of its pro- 
 ductions ; but it is liable to great embarrassment 
 on account of a difference in \he\v price. We have 
 
 I 2
 
 116 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 now low prices for every thing ; but no working 
 man is benefited, because at the best, his re- 
 ceipts are but in proportion to his payments. 
 With wheat at 54^. per quarter, there is actually 
 more distress felt than when it was 120^. ; and 
 were it as low as 30*. per quarter, the fall being 
 occasioned by the abstraction of so much currency 
 as causes the difference, no good would ultimately 
 accrue to any human being; — we should but find 
 ourselves in a worse condition than we are in 
 at present. It is the silliest, though the com- 
 monest of all the " vulgar errors" prevalent at 
 this day, to suppose that universally low prices 
 are good for the people, and that high are in- 
 jurious. Why such a notion formerly obtained 
 favour with the poor was, that they remembered 
 when they were better fed and clothed ; and as 
 prices happened then to be low, they naturally 
 considered the one the cause of the other: but 
 many of them have since found, that when corn 
 was at the highest, they were never so distressed 
 as they have been since. High prices or low prices 
 in themselves are neither good nor bad for the 
 public, provided they are uniform : it is the cha?ige, 
 either way, which produces inconvenience and dis- 
 tress ; and in particular the descending series, when 
 it is unaccompanied with a sufficient remission of tax- 
 ation. If with symbolic money to the amount of 
 twenty-five millions, we were taxed only to the 
 amount of twenty-five millions in real money, we 
 should not find low prices give us any trouble ;
 
 AS A C I RCL LATINO M K D I f M . 117 
 
 each would have what he needed : if our symbolic 
 money were doubled and our taxation doubled 
 also, as of course it would be, the one being con- 
 sequent on the other, we should not find high 
 prices better our condition, or alter it for the 
 worse : but if with taxes that require yZ/^j/ millions 
 of j^eal money, we have only twenty-jive millions 
 o{ symbolic money in circulation, then it is obvious 
 enough, that infinite distress may exist in connec- 
 tion with low prices ; and this is the condition in 
 which we find ourselves now. Let but Govern- 
 ment awake to the truth ; let us have symbolic 
 money in the degree in which we are entitled to it, 
 and there will be no longer any anxiety about 
 prices : they will gradually find their level. The 
 landlord would, perhaps, find it necessary, once in 
 his life, to proportion the rent of his farm to the 
 current price of corn ; but this he might avoid 
 altogether, if he consented to take a corn rent or a 
 gold rent at all times. By means of symbolic 
 money producing him every year the same quan- 
 tity oi corn or the same quantity oi gold, he would 
 get a fair return for the use of his land ; his tenant 
 would obtain a fair reward for his industry and 
 skill ; capital would again become productive in 
 the management of land, and the breeding of 
 cattle ; and last, taough by no means least in con- 
 sideration, the peasantry of our country would be 
 enabled to resume their former healthy looks, their 
 manly English character. All the agricultural in- 
 terests would once more flourish, without detri-
 
 118 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 ment to the interests of any other class of the 
 community. 
 
 I have said without detriment, but I ought to 
 say with advantage, to all other interests. For 
 instance, the Bank of England would be, as now, 
 the great mart for gold and silver, but not, as now, 
 the arena of fear, doubt, and dismay to a thousand 
 anxious applicants. By taking symbolic money 
 to the Bank, I should be able to purchase any 
 quantity of gold, exactly as at present, unless 
 some transient cause operated to render the pre- 
 cious metals dearer in other countries ; in conse- 
 quence of which the Bank might be expected, 
 after several millions of pounds of gold or silver 
 had been purchased and sent abroad, to declare 
 that till further notice gold would be 4/. per ounce, 
 or 4/. 1^. &c., and that in the mean time they 
 would give symbolic money for it, or sell it for sym- 
 bolic money, at that rate. In such a case, I buy 
 it or tiot, as 1 would any other article of merchan- 
 dize, the price of which was for a time liable to be 
 affected by a greater demand than usual. If the 
 Continent were in a state of alarm, or war were 
 apprehended, the price would probably remain 
 high for some time. If I had very cogent reasons 
 for obtaining either gold or silver, I might then 
 make a sacrifice of some money to compass my 
 object; but in general, I should wait till the price 
 had returned to its usual level. Or, as an article 
 of traffic, I might calculate the chances of a rise 
 or fall in the price of gold, and either buy or sell
 
 AS A ClllCULATIXG MEDIUM. 119 
 
 on a small scale or a large one ; as I should make 
 purchase or sale under the same circumstances of 
 funded property, to whatever amount was compa- 
 tible with my ability or inclination. But what- 
 ever I did on such an occasion, I should do with 
 reference to my own interests, as much as if I 
 were about to purchase sugar, tea, corn, cattle, 
 or any other article of foreign or home produc- 
 tion. 
 
 But suppose there were to be a panic ? Panica 
 could not occur. While the bank is known 
 to have much less gold in its coffers than it has 
 paper money in circulation — while it is compelled 
 to part with all that gold to the first comers, if 
 they can find paper money to purchase it w^ith, at 
 ajidccl price, and that the lotvest price, without the 
 possibility of any advance — while in doing this, 
 and in the apprehension of its being done, the 
 public mind is excited by the fear that the gold 
 will be all gone, that the Bank will stop payment, 
 and that all the paper money of the Bank will 
 then be worth nothing — while the Bank, to protect 
 itself from this extremity, checks the cnculation of 
 its paper money, and ruins thousands who depend 
 on the usual receipt of that paper money, in order 
 to guard itself from ruin — while, by the operation 
 of this check, paper money advances in value, and 
 the prices of all other articles fall, so that the fo- 
 reigner and speculator is at last tempted to decline 
 taking gold because he can now buy those other 
 articles to greater advantage ;— while this abomin-
 
 120 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 able system continues, which has continued too 
 long, panics will continue : they will be as pe- 
 riodical as good and bad news, or good and bad 
 weather. But with symholic money as it ought to 
 exist, panics on account of gold and silver are im- 
 possible. 
 
 Non est meum, si mugiat Africis 
 Malus procellis, ad miseras preces 
 Decurrere ! 
 
 I should as soon think of buying in time of war all 
 the wine, or coffee, or corn I could get, and much 
 more the latter, for of that, in apprehension of a 
 real scarcity, there might be good reason to lay in 
 a store ; but the precious metals, as they are called, 
 could be of no particular use to me. 
 
 The Bank of England, in its character of a bul- 
 lion broker, or a cambist with respect to coined 
 money, would transact business with ease, having 
 nothing to fear from a disordered state of the 
 Exchanges ; and in the department of discount- 
 ing bills, the directors, with all other bankers, 
 would find the way of their profession freer from 
 anxiety, as it would be certainly freer from risk. 
 With a sufficiency of Exchequer Bills, we should 
 not require them to issue their own notes; they 
 would grant loans or discounts in that money : 
 thus we should have no apprehension of failing 
 banks, no jealousy of money being issued with- 
 out real funds to meet it. We should have no 
 promises to pay, and therefore no reason to dread 
 their non-performance.
 
 AS A CIRCULATING MEDIUM. 121 
 
 The merchant would import foreign commodi- 
 ties, and export those of this country, without 
 dread that those would be left on his hands at 
 home, or these remain unsold in warehouses 
 abroad, while a drain was made on this country 
 for gold, to obtain which again, both foreign com- 
 modities and manufactured goods must be offered 
 in the market at half their real value. If home 
 productions were to bring high prices in our sym- 
 bolic money, those of other countries would sell 
 for as much in proportion. Price has nothing 
 to do with value, and value is the equivalent 
 regarded in transactions with foreign countries. 
 Commerce, therefore, would flourish equally, whe- 
 ther prices here were high or low, provided only 
 that gold and silver were allowed to find their 
 level in price along with all other articles, and this 
 level in symbolic money they need no longer be 
 prevented from finding. For, suppose that in re- 
 turn for transmarine productions, gold should be 
 demanded to an inconvenient extent : as this rises 
 in price, goods of home production instead of fall- 
 ing in consequence, as at present, will maintain 
 their station ; thus it will operate as a premium 
 on their exportation, whereas now the premium is 
 the other way ; and the foreigner, finding that he 
 must have our goods, and that he cannot get them 
 lower, will then return his gold into the market in 
 purchase of them, and in time will not take it at 
 all. Our manufacturers will thus be able to ob- 
 tain prices adequate to the cost of their produc-
 
 122 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 tions ; our artisans will derive wages adequate to 
 the remuneration of their labour and skill : for 
 the food which they consume, they will be able to 
 pay more, since the foreign demand will remain 
 unaffected by an increase of price ; and thus, 
 while trade thrives, the agriculturist will not need 
 to be deprived of that adequate return to his 
 labour and capital which he deserves. 
 
 Immediately after the panic in 1825-6, we were 
 told by one of our statesmen, who was esteemed 
 a great authority on matters of this kind, that we 
 had been within twenty-four hours of barter. 
 What was meant by this expression is not quite 
 clear, but it was supposed to indicate some great 
 evil which we had escaped, and the words flew 
 through the country with this idea attached to 
 them. If that eminent person intended to say, 
 we were within twenty-four hours of a state of an- 
 archy, or of a state incompatible with the exist- 
 ence of the national debt, which is equivalent to 
 a revolution, they were awful words of course ; 
 but in that case, I ask what can be said more 
 strongly against a system of money, than that 
 it is capable of such results ; for a panic may 
 spring up at any time : an unfriendly nation, or a 
 combination of individuals, may bring it about 
 whenever they please. Is this an order of things 
 which any man of 'property would wish to see 
 exist? Would he not rather correct it if he could? 
 If, on the other hand, it was meant by the above 
 declaration that there might have been a Bank
 
 AS A CIRCULATING MEDIUM. 123 
 
 restriction, for that gold could not have been paid 
 twenty-four hours longer, what was there in this 
 to fright the kingdom from its propriety ? We 
 had experienced that evil, and knew the worst of 
 it. Looking at barter in that way, 1 see nothing 
 in the declaration that ought to excite a moment's 
 fear in any man, whether fundholder or land- 
 holder. If the Bank could not have continued 
 cash payments, and in consequence of that in- 
 ability, payments in kind had become necessary ; 
 whether those payments were made through the 
 medium of Bank of England paper, or through 
 a7iy other 7nedium, it would have signified little : 
 they would have been supported for some time at 
 least, as they were during the war, and we should 
 have then set ourselves seriously to consider whe- 
 ther any, and what improvements, could be made 
 in the system. 1 am, however, inclined to think 
 that it was the opinion of the speaker, and of 
 most of those who heard him, or read the state- 
 ment, that a want of gold was identified with the 
 loss of every kind of property, and a subversion of 
 all government. 
 
 It is the peculiar quality of symbolic money to 
 free us from all anxiety about these matters, for it 
 enables us to enjoy all the benefits of barter, with- 
 out alarming us with the name of it; and while it 
 provides the means of paying taxes, it enables 
 us most strictly to preserve faith with the public 
 as well as with the private creditor. For want of a
 
 124 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 perfect symbolic money, and in the absence of suf- 
 ficient coin, men in earlier ages were fain to use 
 real money in making their payments to the state ; 
 but I never heard that the dissolution of govern- 
 ment followed, though the payment was a great 
 inconvenience. In the history of the Exchequer 
 of this country, mention is frequently made of 
 such payments. After the time of Henry I., 
 when provisions were no longer required to be 
 supplied in kind, on compensation being effected 
 by a certain amount of money, there was still so 
 little specie in the realm, that real money was very 
 commonly tendered : gold, for instance, by weight, 
 for it was not then a coin in England ; " some- 
 times palfreys, destriers (war horses), chasceors 
 (hunting horses), leveriers (hounds), hawks and 
 falcons, and things of other kinds ; all which may 
 be comprised under the general name of revenue, 
 the same having been rendered by the party, and 
 accepted by the crown as such." * What was 
 done formerly could be done again ; and if real 
 money were no impediment to payments made on 
 account of the revenue, there would be little or 
 no difficulty in arranging the receipt of it with 
 private creditors. In a word, we should, under 
 such circumstances, have opened our eyes most 
 likely to the real nature of money, and have 
 adopted that system of symbolic money, to which 
 our investigation has now led us. 
 
 * Madox, c.ix. § I.
 
 AS A CIRCULATING MEDIUM. 125 
 
 In all our money transactions hitherto, we have 
 paid too much regard to coin, and have sacrificed 
 to its attainment that real money of which it was 
 but the representative. We forgot that the life 
 w£is more than meat, and the body than raiment. 
 But this was natural, seeing the extremity of dis- 
 tress into which the want of gold and silver threw 
 a man, otherwise of good property, and without 
 fault in the estimation of his fellow-creatures. 
 When we have restored the right order of things 
 — when real money is valuable for its own sake, 
 and that which is aijmboUc occupies the second 
 place in our esteem, as it will do when it can no 
 longer be employed as an instrument of torture, 
 to extract from unable persons more real money 
 than they had ever intended to pay, — then a man 
 will begin to feel that in possessing talent or skill, 
 he possesses the means of making himself happy, 
 and of enriching those with his advantages who 
 are dependent on him. He will have leisure to 
 cultivate other arts, than such as administer merely 
 to the wants of the body ; and in doing this, he 
 will furnish men of greater attainments in science 
 or literature, or others of superior genius, with the 
 means also of obtaining a comfortable provision 
 for their families. The benefit will be diffused 
 among all ranks, but in a more especial degree 
 they will benefit who are able to contribute to the 
 improvement of the mind, and who suffer more 
 than others at the present day, because none have 
 so keen a sense of suifering. What has been so
 
 126 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 beautifully said of Sparta, will then be applicable 
 to once more ** merry" England : — " The coun- 
 try resembled some holy personage or particular 
 philosopher, rather than a great commonwealth, 
 and metropolis of an empire. And, as the poets 
 feign of Hercules, that with his lion's skin and his 
 club, he went over the world, punishing the 
 wicked and extirpating tyrants ; so it may be 
 said of the Lacedaemonians, that with a piece of 
 parchment and a plain frieze coat, they gained the 
 sovereignty of Greece, and (which is more) their 
 affections too : they deposed all usurped powers 
 and tyrannical governments, determined wars by 
 their authority, and composed civil differences or 
 seditions : and this they often did, without so 
 much as taking their buckler in their hand, but 
 barely by sending some plain man, without at- 
 tendance, who went under the character of the 
 Lacedaemonian ambassador ; and they swarmed 
 about him at his coming like bees about their 
 king, and immediately composed themselves into 
 good order ; so remarkably eminent for good go- 
 vernment and exact justice was this illustrious 
 commonwealth, above others." 
 
 " And, therefore, I cannot but wonder at those 
 who say, that the Spartans were good and obe- 
 dient subjects, but not skilled in the art of govern- 
 ing ; and for proof of it allege a saying of King 
 Theopompus, who when one said that * Sparta 
 held up so long, because its kings could com- 
 mand well,' replied, ' Nay, rather, because the
 
 AS A CIRCULATING MEDIUM. 127 
 
 people know so well how to obey :' for indeed 
 those who cannot command wisely, are seldom or 
 never well served : on the other hand, how obe- 
 dience to authority may be procured, is a lesson 
 which the prince ought to learn, for a skilful 
 leader is always readily followed. And as it is 
 the part of a good rider to train his horse to turn, 
 or stop, or go on at his pleasure ; so is it the 
 greatest piece of kingcraft to teach subjects a 
 willing obedience. Wherefore the Lacedaemo- 
 nians so ordered matters, that people did not only 
 endure, but even desired to be their subjects. 
 For they did not use to petition them for ships, or 
 money, or a supply of armed men, but only for a 
 Spartan commander ; and having obtained one, 
 used him with honour and reverence : for so the 
 Sicilians behaved themselves to Gylippus, the 
 Chalcidians to Brasidas, and all the colonies of 
 the Grecians, in Asia, to Lysander, Agesilaus, and 
 Callicratidas. In short, they esteemed and called 
 them peace-makers, the reformers, the correctors 
 of licentiousness, both of princes and people ; and 
 had their eyes always upon the city of Sparta, as 
 the perfect model of good manners and wise go- 
 vernment. The rest seemed as scholars ; they 
 were the masters of Greece."* 
 
 It was the contemplation of this beautiful re- 
 public which led Plato, in his idea of a perfect 
 commonwealth, to forbid the circulation of any 
 
 • Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus.
 
 128 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY. 
 
 money but that which was symbolic. After de- 
 scribing the various classes of artificers and hus- 
 bandmen, traders and merchants, who would in- 
 habit the state, he supposes the following question 
 to be put — " But how^ shall the internal affairs of 
 the state go on ? — how shall individuals exchange 
 their several productions with each other, which, 
 indeed, is the main object of our forming a com- 
 munity, and making a state ? It is manifest (he 
 replied) that they must do so by buying and sell- 
 ing. A regular market, then, and coin as a 
 token for e.vchange, will be the result of this ? 
 Exactly so," * And lest any one should suppose 
 that this money, which was to be used but as a 
 token of exchange, was intended to possess any 
 kind of intrinsic value, he declares, in another 
 place, that it was designed to be utterly worthless 
 in the estimation of all other people. " Coin 
 is for the purpose of daily exchange, which ex- 
 change it is almost a matter of necessity that 
 artisans must make, and indeed all persons who 
 need their services, — and to pay w^ages to hired 
 servants, slaves, and settlers ; for which purpose 
 we affirm there must be a coin having a value 
 
 * Ti ^£ Zt) ev avrij ry ttoXei ; ttGjs aXKr}\ois fieraSioffovffiv, wv 
 av eKacTTOL epyai^oyvrai ; wv St) kveKa Kai KOivwviav tto it] aafXEvoi 
 voXiv wKiaafiev ', — A^Xov ^y] {rj B' os) on irujXovyTer Kai (ovovjjLeyoi. 
 — 'Ayopa Stj iffuv kul vofiiajxa ^vfifioXoy riis aWay^s Ivtfca yevi]- 
 aerai etc tovtov ', Ilaj/u fxev ovv. — Plato's Polit. B. 2. vol. 2. 
 p. 371. edit. 1578.
 
 AS A CIRCULATING MEDIUM, 
 
 129 
 
 among the members of the state, but no value to 
 the t^est of the ivorld.'"* 
 
 It is not possible for words to convey a more 
 complete notion of symbolic money. But Plato 
 goes further with us — " And the state must 
 also have or procure a common (current) Greek 
 coin, for the purpose of military expeditions, or 
 the occasions of visiting other states, such as 
 for instance, embassies, or for any other pur- 
 pose necessary for the state. And when any 
 individual has occasion to travel abroad, on ob- 
 taining permission from the rulers, he shall go 
 abroad [with it : f] and when he comes home again 
 he shall return to the state whatever foreign money 
 he has in hand, receivins: the state monev to the 
 same amount. If it shall appear that any one 
 retains such foreign money, it shall then become 
 public property ; and he who is privy to such a 
 transaction, and does not reveal it, shall be subject 
 to censure and reprobation equally with him who 
 has brought the money in, and to a fine not less in 
 
 * ^Ofjiifffia C" evtKci oWay^s tjjs kuO' iifxepay, ijv ci]fiiovpy(n^ 
 Ti uWaTTtaQui ar-^ecoi' avayicaloy, Kui TrdCTiv oiroauiv yjptia. twv 
 TOiovTiop, fiKrdovs nitrQitJTols, covKois Kai ittolicois aTroTiveiv' uv 
 kviKa (pufiEV TO vofXitTfia KTr]Ttov avrois fxEv tvrifiov, rois ce 
 aWois avS'pwTTots ucoKifiov. — Plato's Laws, B. 5. Vol.2, p. 
 742. 
 
 t ' With it.' These words are not in the text, and the pas- 
 sage would most naturally be so translated as to omit them. The 
 context however clearly supposes that he must, on leaving the 
 state, have obtained current money from the authorities in ex- 
 chaDge for his own state coin. 
 
 K
 
 130 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 amount than the value of the foreign money so 
 imported."* 
 
 From these provisions it will appear that, 
 while symbolic money was to be the current coin 
 of the republic, no grounds exist for supposing the 
 state would be left destitute of gold and silver, in 
 so far as they were necessary to keep up commer- 
 cial exchanges and other foreign relations. On 
 the contrary, good care was to be taken that the 
 state should always have a sufficient stock of that 
 coin which was most current throughout Greece, 
 which stock, instead of being diminished, would 
 be greatly increased by being reserved for this 
 purpose only. 
 
 Plato, it is evident, had the example of Lace- 
 deemon before him. Some indeed have affirmed 
 that the Spartans were poor in regard to the 
 precious metals, but he has given us reason to 
 judge otherwise. He makes Socrates, in the 
 dialogue with Alcibiades, say, " In all Greece, 
 there is not so much gold and silver as is to be 
 found laid up in Lacedeemon, since it has been 
 for many generations imported thither from all the 
 rest of Greece, and often also from other coun- 
 tries, and to no place was it ever exported : — 
 as the fox said to the lion in the fable of iEsop, 
 traces indeed are plainly manifest of money having 
 
 f Koivov c' 'EXXrjviKov vofiifTfia, ev£Ka re (TTpareiCiy, Kai 
 aTToBrjuiuiy £is rovs aWovs avSfpoJirovs, olov Trpetrfieiwv, rj /cat rivos 
 arayKaias aXXrjs, rrj iroXet vofXLafxa 'EWt/vi/cov. iluarri ^' av apa 
 TTore avajKYi Tis yiyvjjrat avroSr] jieTv , TrapaLTrjrrafievos fxev rovs 
 ap-)(^ovTas airodrjjj.eiTU). vofxiafxa ht av irore tXiav ^eviKov oiKaSe 
 a(piKr]Tai TrepiyevofiEvov, k. t. X. Plato's Laws, B. V. Vol. 2. p. 742.
 
 AS A CMlCr [.ATI N"(; MEDIUM. 131 
 
 entered into Lacedaemon, but none of its ever 
 going out again. Wherefore in gold and silver they 
 are evidently the richest of all the Greeks,* and 
 the king is the richest among them all, for the 
 biggest income by far is his ; added to which, the 
 tax is not a little one which the Lacedaemonians 
 pay their kings." 
 
 Seneca was of opinion that the Spartans used 
 leather money, as well as iron made useless for 
 any other purpose.* Both would, of course, have 
 a stamp upon them to show by what authority they 
 were issued, and then they would be in exact ac- 
 cordance with our supposed Exchequer Bills. 
 Adopting therefore the view of money which Plato 
 has taken, we should have in our Exchequer bills 
 and silver coin his tokens of exchange for all the in- 
 ternal dealings of the people of the united king- 
 dom with each other, and with the government; 
 while for foreign trade and foreign travel we 
 should have all kinds of gold and silver in re- 
 serve, no matter of what country : and with less 
 restraint on individuals than Plato contemplated, 
 we should find our treasure equally secure. For 
 though no men with us would be compelled to go 
 to the Treasury for the common coin of Europe, 
 when he wanted to export or carry it abroad, he 
 would go to his banker's, or to the Bank of Eng- 
 land, and there take up such sums as he required, 
 depositing for it an equivalent; and when again 
 
 * Plato's Alcibiades, Book. i. Vol. ii. p. 122. Edit. 1578. 
 t Seneca de Benef. B, v. c. 14. 
 K 2
 
 i32 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 he returned to this kingdom or recalled the money 
 he had exported, though we should not compel him 
 to take it to the Treasury and there exchange it for 
 the symbolic money of the state, he would place it 
 with his own banker or the Bank of England, draw- 
 ing out symbolic money in return : thus, either way 
 the same end is answered ; and this country would 
 have all the advantage of Plato's regulations, or the 
 Spartan custom, as much as if the Treasury were 
 the only place of general deposit for the precious 
 metals, and the only source of supply for sym- 
 bohc money. 
 
 Shall we then use this symbolic money which 
 is put in our hands as it were by Providence at the 
 present critical juncture, to rid us of all our diffi- 
 culties, to give us unlimited freedom of internal 
 trade, and of external commerce, to make us a 
 rich, free, and happy kingdom ? — Shall we realize 
 the conceptions of Plato, and confirm the expe- 
 rience of Lycurgus in our own country, and times ? 
 — or shall we turn again to coin, and sacrifice the 
 health and happiness of millions, as we have long 
 done, to the sordid views of those who see no 
 good under the sun but in the possession of certain 
 little pieces of gold and silver ? — Struck with the 
 difficulty of effecting any thing for the elevation of 
 the national character, while matter so base was the 
 summum bonum of all men's hopes and wishes, our 
 English Plato wished to banish money altogether 
 from his commonwealth. Not perceiving how the 
 good of money might be separated from its evil by
 
 AS A CIRCUI.ATIXG MEDIUM. 133 
 
 the use of tokens of exchange, or symbolic money, 
 he was led into this extreme. He expresses a 
 noble scorn, *' that gold, which is in itself so use- 
 less a thing, should be every where so much es- 
 teemed ; that even men for whom it was made, 
 and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought 
 of less value than this metal : that a man of lead, 
 who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is 
 bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and 
 good men to serve him, only because he has a great 
 heap of that metal ; and that if it should happen, 
 that by some accident, or trick of law, (which 
 sometimes produces as great changes as chance 
 itself) all this wealth should pass from the master 
 to the meanest varlet of his whole family, he him- 
 self would very soon become one of the ser- 
 vants of that man, as if he were a thing that be- 
 longed to his wealth, and so were bound to follow 
 its fortune."* To abolish this ridiculous elevation 
 of insensate matter over sentient mind, he would 
 go so far as to even do away with pi^operti/ by 
 establishing a community of goods ; but happily 
 for the peace of many families, this measure is not 
 necessary for the end he has in view, — the welfare 
 of the community. 
 
 In a natural state, it is certain that if real money 
 only were regarded, and no such thing were 
 known as coin, the man who had abundance of 
 
 * Sir Thomas More's Utopia, translated by Bishop Burnet, 
 p. 89.
 
 134 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 gold would be much less honoured, and much less 
 envied, than the man who had plenty of corn, 
 or clothes, or any other of the necessaries, com- 
 forts, or conveniences of life : and if in the social 
 state an undue ascendancy has been given to gold, 
 by any device practised in the infancy of society 
 which has conferred on it the power of controlling 
 all other things, there is no reason why it should 
 not now be deprived of this pre-eminence, espe- 
 cially as it would seem to have been the design of 
 Heaven that no such character should attach to 
 gold ; for it was hidden deep in the earth, that 
 men might not get at it easily : whereas, on the 
 other hand, all the natural productions, which 
 tend to man's welfare, are abundant and ready of 
 access in the degree in which they are useful or 
 beneficial. If, then, it is one of the instances 
 wherein man has succeeded, contrary to right and 
 reason, in fettering the mind and body of his fel- 
 low-men. by shackles which he ought not to im- 
 pose upon them, what prevents them from being 
 broken off now? The worst that can follow is a 
 state of barter, which if it has many inconve- 
 niences, does not call upon us to sustain half the 
 labour, or to undergo half the privations which a 
 metallic currency inflicts. Men may have fewer 
 luxuries, perchance, but they will never be in 
 want of the necessaries of life. Moreover, means 
 would be speedily devised, by which they could 
 circulate and exchange with ease and expedition 
 their commodities among each other. The whole
 
 AS A CIRCULATING MEDIUM. 135 
 
 country would then be full of industrious, well- 
 fed, well-clothed, healthy and happy people — no 
 men overworked, and no children working at all. 
 Now, as this is very far from being our condition 
 at present, what is there to alarm us in the change ? 
 We have a right to be as happy and free as pos- 
 sible ; and if a metallic currency system is not an 
 improvement upon barter, it is our duty to con- 
 sider how it may be amended, or else to return to 
 a state of barter. 
 
 To amend the system is not to preserve gold at 
 2ijiaed rate, while all things round are fluctuating. 
 This will make rich men richer, and poor men 
 poorer ; for the more these strive to preserve their 
 station in society, the more those are benefited by 
 the increasing cheapness of all commodities; which 
 led Sir Thomas More to remark, ** While money is 
 the standard of all other things, I cannot think 
 that a nation can be governed either justly or hap- 
 pily : not justly, because the best things will fall 
 to the share of the worst men ; nor happily, be- 
 cause all things will be divided among a few (and 
 even those are not in all respects happy) the rest 
 being left to be absolutely miserable."* 
 
 Still less would it tend to ameliorate the con- 
 dition of our people, to make the value of gold 
 fluctuate; "raising the value of specie when the 
 king's debts are large, and lowering it when his 
 revenues were to come in, that so he might both 
 
 * Utopia, p. 47.
 
 136 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 pay much with a little, and in a little receive a 
 great deal."t We are suffering now from this 
 fluctuation, as was shewn in the preceding pages, 
 fpr much was paid with a little during the late 
 war ; and in a little, the state now again receives 
 a great deal. But without fluctuation, what is to 
 be done in the event of another war ? If the gold 
 we have is not coined into smaller pieces, so as to 
 go further in representing the necessary demands 
 of the state for an increased revenue when extra- 
 ordinary supplies are to be raised, how sudden 
 and fearful will be the fall in the money value of 
 all commodities ! The same effect will follow if 
 we adopt another Bank Restriction Act, as if we 
 used smaller pieces of money, and at the end of 
 the war restored them to their former weight. 
 
 A third course remains, which is to coin gold 
 progressively of less and less size, as the exigencies 
 of the state appear to require it. This would cer- 
 tainly ease the productive classes, but it would 
 be unjust to all who have a fixed income ; rents 
 and contracts would be attended with a gradual 
 declension in value, and one class of mankind 
 would be constantly cheated. But coin can 
 only be treated of, in a Jijped, a fluctuating, or a 
 gradually declining state : and if in all these it is 
 worse than barter, the system ought to be abandoned . 
 
 Symbolic money would materially advance the 
 benefits to be derived from barter, independent 
 
 * Utopia, 37.
 
 AS A CIRCULATING MEDIUM. 137 
 
 of its use as a convenience to the state. In the 
 metropolis, for instance, if a }Dublic Joint Stock 
 Banking Company were established, with a large 
 subscribed capital, sufficient to cover most amply 
 all the losses it could possibly incur by bad debts; 
 if in every commercial town, or agricultural dis- 
 trict throughout the country, similar Banking 
 Companies were established, on equally safe foun- 
 dations, which should correspond with each other, 
 and with the great Metropolitan Bank : if all these 
 were to issue notes of one pound and upwards, 
 payable in each other's notes ; or in gold, like any 
 other commodity, at the market pince : (silver coin 
 being supplied by the Metropolitan Bank for 
 small change) — we should have a complete system 
 of currency, abundant, but never in excess ; for 
 competition, foreign and domestic, would at all 
 times prevent men from receiving more money for 
 their goods than they were fairly entitled to •, and 
 while that was the case, there could be no super- 
 fluity of money. 
 
 This would be the effect of symbolic money, 
 founded on a system of barter. It would render 
 the system more perfect — as perfect, indeed, as 
 any nation could desire. But would this system 
 comport well with a government which has to 
 raise a revenue by taxation from the people V — 1 
 believe it would. The collectors of taxes would 
 carry in these notes to the exchequer, to the 
 amount annually required, and the state would 
 disburse them again in the usual manner.
 
 138 PERFECTION OF SYMBOLIC MONEY 
 
 Governments, however, are jealous; and while 
 the nature of money is so imperfectly understood, 
 that even eminent writers speak of the preroga- 
 tive of coining money, as if it were not merely 
 a prerogative to give a receipt for supplies fur- 
 nished to the state, — a receipt which a sub- 
 ject ought not to give for the king, nor the king 
 for the meanest of his subjects: — so long as this 
 ignorance prevails, monarchs will wish to make 
 money, and ministers to issue it, though they know 
 they cannot provide the thousandth part of that 
 which is in daily use as a circulating medium. 
 On this account we propose that an issue of Ex- 
 chequer bills should proceed from the state to the 
 amount of the annual taxes, and that the present 
 system of coin should be continued. By means of 
 Exchequer bills, most of the business transactions 
 of the country will be conducted, while it is passing 
 from hand to hand, before it is caught up by the 
 tax collector ; and if it should happen to be found 
 insufficient. Banking companies will supply the 
 void ; or the Bank of England, having such go- 
 vernment notes in hand to offer, when need is, in 
 lieu of gold on demand, will readily furnish the 
 requisite additional sum in its own notes at a rea- 
 sonable rate of interest. — A third course would be 
 to let the Bank of England as at present supply the 
 metropolis with notes, and the country bankers 
 their respective districts : the latter paying their 
 notes in those of the Bank of England ; and the 
 Bank giving gold for its notes, or its notes for
 
 AS A CIRCULATING MEDIUM. 139 
 
 gold, at what may be the market price of gold at 
 the time, as a broker buys or sells stock, without 
 charging any commission.* Any of these three 
 sources of supply will be good, as each is capable 
 of diffusing to a sufficient extent the benefits of 
 an utidepreciated currency : but the best will be 
 that which does it at the cheapest rate to the peo- 
 ple, and with the most transparent openness in the 
 management of its affairs. 
 
 We are now placed, by the check which has 
 been put to our circulating medium, in the same 
 condition as if all the turnpike roads in the king- 
 dom had been broken up, all the canals destroy- 
 ed — all waggons and coaches prohibited — and 
 trade were again conducted, by means of pack- 
 horses, along narrow, diflScult and dangerous ways. 
 By the introduction of symbolic money these ad- 
 vantages will be restored, and a sort oirailivay for 
 the interchange of commodities will pervade the 
 whole country. 
 
 A few centuries ago, this measure, had it been 
 proposed, would have been impracticable, from the 
 general want of education among the people. It 
 is the youngest offspring of that parent of so many 
 valuable discoveries and noble institutions — the 
 Art of Printing. When men could neither read 
 nor write, the only approach they could make 
 to a purely .symbolic money was in tallies, or iron 
 money, and from the imperfection of these the 
 
 * See " Money System of England," p. 193.
 
 l40 peiifeCtion of symbolic money. 
 
 counterfeiter might throw all the countries that used 
 such instruments of taxation into great disorder. 
 An illiterate people could neveru sepaper money.* 
 Happily, this age is just ripe for it ; and more 
 peculiarly gratifying is it to see, that those countries 
 which are most free, and can best employ si/mbolic 
 money, are those in which Education is so widely 
 diffused as to permit its general introduction. 
 Thus all things conspire to mark this as the proper 
 era for the establishment of a perfect monetary 
 
 SYSTEM. 
 
 * Except as the Tartars use it, with the royal seal affixed. 
 " Apud Cathainos Tartaros, teste Haitono, nummus de papyro fit 
 in forma quadrata, cui regale signutn impressum." — SperHng, 
 p. 275.