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 A PEACTICAL PLAN 
 
 FOE 
 
 ASSIMILATING 
 
 THE 
 
 ENGLISH AND AMERICAN MONEY 
 
 AS A STEP TOWARDS 
 
 A UNIVEKSAL MONEY 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
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 PBEFATORY NOTE 
 
 THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 SKI* 
 
 "" 1+- 
 
 i 
 
 4 
 
 This little book was published by Mr. Bagehot in 
 1869, and was out of print at the time of his 
 ' death in 1877. 
 
 An interest in its subject is likely to be revived 
 in view of the Monetary Congress to be held in 
 Paris in September of the present year, and a new 
 edition is therefore issued. 
 
 No doubt one accidental advantage of the 
 scheme (the adhesion of Germany to the proposed 
 English-American System) might be more difficult 
 of realisation now than when Mr. Bagehot wrote, 
 since Germany has in the interval chosen a new 
 currency of her own. On the other hand, however, 
 the resumption of specie payments by the United 
 States has removed what Mr. Bagehot recognised 
 as ' one of the worst objections ' to his plan. 
 
 kJ 
 
 i88374
 
 PEE PACE 
 
 TO 
 
 THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 The greatest want of our present political economy 
 in England is, that some one should do for it what 
 Sir Henry Maine has done so well for ' ancient law.' 
 We want some one to connect our theoretical account 
 of the origin of things with the real origin. Our 
 theory is right enough ; our notion of what is best 
 to be done is correct, but our notions of the way 
 practices began and customs grew up are often 
 erroneous enough. In physical science, it would 
 be a great mistake to take the easy ' sequence ' of 
 the elementary text-book for the order of real 
 discovery ; in fact, the hard propositions at the 
 end were often discovered first, and men worked 
 back from thence to the simple beginnings. Just 
 so it might be shown that the simple ' definitions ' 
 of political economy are not much like the first 
 practices of early history, but that the real com- 
 mencements were odder and far harder.
 
 PKEFACE. Vll 
 
 I cannot pretend to write on such a subject, 
 least of all now in a mere preface to a series of 
 papers on a practical plan. But I mention it for 
 this reason : — In England there is a sort of con- 
 servatism of ' coinage ' ; we have got to fancy that 
 our notions are not only most right, but most 
 ancient ; that they embody what men have always 
 thought reasonable as well as what we now think 
 so. The moment a real and radical improvement 
 is suggested, this kind of conservatism is frightened, 
 if not shocked. ' I do not know,' I have heard it 
 said, 'what I would not rather change than our 
 " sovereign " : it is about one of the best things we 
 have.' But yet, if we examine our coinage creed, 
 we shall find that it is a very modern creed, that 
 old prestige attaches to a very different creed, — 
 that we have gradually attained our present notions 
 in times past, and therefore may hope to advance 
 beyond them in time to come. 
 
 We commonly think, I believe, that the coining 
 of money is an economic function of government ; 
 that the Government verifies the quality and quan- 
 tity of metal in the coin out of regard to the good 
 of its subjects, and that Government is admirably 
 suited to this task — that it is a very reliable verifier. 
 But in truth, if we look at the real motives of
 
 viii INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 governments, and the real action of governments, 
 we may come to think otherwise. 
 
 The prevalent notion about coinage is not an 
 economic but a mystic notion. It is thought to 
 be an inalienable part of sovereignty ; people fancy 
 that no one but a government can coin — that it is 
 nearly a contradiction that anyone else should 
 coin. A superstition follows the act. Coining is 
 called a ' natural ' function of government, as if 
 nature would not permit a government without it ; 
 an ' inherent ' right of royalty, as if no one could 
 be king or queen without it. ' The denomination 
 of the coin ' is 'in the breast of the king,' says 
 Blackstone ; ' Monetandi jus principum ossibus in- 
 kceret,' is the current formula which old writers on 
 the civil law quote ; and these are only specimens 
 of the old teaching. 
 
 Such is not only the legal fiction but the 
 popular idea. That Caesar's coin is something 
 peculiarly Caesar's, that Queen Victoria's superscrip- 
 tion marks something indefeasibly Victoria's — are 
 beliefs as firm as they are old. You may find 
 them as rooted in an English county now, as they 
 ever were in a Eoman province at any time. 
 
 There was, in truth, much reason for such 
 ideas, though most of that reason has passed away,
 
 PEEFACE. ix 
 
 and though it is not very easy to recall it. We 
 are apt to fancy that the wants of a past age are 
 the same as the wants of the present, because 
 we forget how much the past had to make for 
 itself, and how much, because the past made it, we 
 of the present find ready. The greatest of his- 
 torical achievements is Government. Mankind — a 
 large part of mankind — have acquired an ingrained 
 habit of deferring to certain persons, and of obey- 
 ing certain persons. The peace of the world is 
 preserved by a habit — nearly unconscious — of con- 
 stant subordination. But men were not born with 
 that habit ; savage tribes are now wanting in it ; 
 old nations did ' what was right in their own eyes,' 
 and were defective in it too. A long history and a 
 curious list of means were necessary to implant it. 
 One most efficient expedient was the use of 
 Royal symbols. The crown, the sceptre, the coro- 
 nation, the procession, the homage — were so many 
 acts indicating sovereignty and advertising sove- 
 reignty. The stamping of the common coin was 
 another such act. It brought home to every one 
 who used it that there was a king, and a govern- 
 ment ; it was one link in the chain of impressions 
 and associations which in rude times cemented 
 society by confirming government.
 
 X INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 Probably indeed the coinage was one of the 
 most potent of suggestive symbols. We are so 
 familiar with the matter ; the rudiments of social 
 economy have so thoroughly worked down to 
 common minds, that we no longer find a wonder 
 in money ; but less taught times thought it very 
 curious, almost magical. In rude districts now you 
 may trace the same manner of thought. Money 
 seems to do what nothing else will do. Those who 
 have it need nothing else, for it will buy everything 
 else ; those who are destitute of it are eager to get 
 it, for without it they may on occasions be unable 
 to obtain what they most want. Money is the 
 universal ' procurer,' the one thing by which you 
 are sure of everything, and without which you are 
 sure of nothing. It seems proof against time, too ; 
 other things are less valuable to-day, though you 
 only bought them yesterday ; but money is never 
 ' second-hand.' You may hoard it for years, and 
 be sure it will be as good when you extract it, as it 
 ever was at first. Government is the only maker 
 of this magic, and consequently the prerogative of 
 making it seems half magical too. As an impres- 
 sive and penetrating advertisement of royal powers 
 the ' image and superscription ' had, and even has, 
 a curious efficacy.
 
 PREFACE. xi 
 
 This almost august prerogative shielded a 
 curious source of income. The verification of the 
 quantity of metal in a coin is a trade ; no one 
 would naturally verify gratuitously ; the mode 
 of verification ought to yield a profit, like other 
 trades, and as much as trades. But governments 
 have commonly ma.de it yield much more. They 
 have had a monopoly of the business ; they would 
 let no one else carry it on ; they made not only 
 making worse coin than theirs, but even making as 
 good coin as theirs, a criminal offence ; so it is by 
 English law at this moment. Accordingly govern- 
 ments could make their own charge and gain a 
 profit far greater than the ordinary rate of profit 
 on the capital they were using ; they could make a 
 charge exceptionally high for a service which they 
 could render, and which they would let no one else 
 render. ' The profits on the seignorage,' says the 
 first Lord Liverpool, ' were so much considered by 
 our monarchs as a certain branch of their revenue, 
 that they were occasionally granted in whole or in 
 part either to corporate bodies for their advantage, 
 or for other purposes.' The trade is the simplest 
 of all trades. A holder of bullion brings it to 
 Government to coin, and the Government keeps 
 part of it ; if a thousand ounces are delivered, it
 
 Xli INTEKNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 does not return a thousand ounces, but a thousand 
 ounces minus something. Some civilised govern- 
 ments have, it is true, made an avowed charge for 
 coining ; but most governments have kept back 
 part of the metal, and said nothing about it. 
 
 So far, then, from its being historically true 
 that coining is an economic act, which govern- 
 ments do for the benefit of their subjects, it has 
 been a political act, which they have done for their 
 own sake. It won them reverence and gained them 
 money ; the mightiest monarchs have cared for 
 prestige and revenue, though most monarchs would 
 have been very slow to provide petty cash for small 
 dealers. 
 
 Nor is it at all true that governments have 
 1 verified ' well. Everybody, indeed, knows that 
 they have verified ill. The use of the trade in the 
 minds of many rulers has been that it enabled 
 them to borrow in one currency, and pay in a less. 
 We think we are familiar with the misconduct of 
 government from the frauds of Europe, but it is 
 only those who know what Asiatic currencies are 
 who really understand the true evil. ' The coinage, 8 
 says Sir W. Hunter, in his most able Annals of Rural 
 Bengal, ' the refuse of twenty different dynasties and 
 petty potentates, had been clipped, drilled, filed,
 
 PKEFACE. xiii 
 
 scooped out, sweated, counterfeited, and changed 
 from its original value by every process of debase- 
 ment devised by Hindu ingenuity during a space 
 of four hundred years. The smallest coin could not 
 change hands without an elaborate calculation as 
 to the amount to be deducted from its nominal 
 value. This calculation, it need hardly be said, 
 was always in favour of the stronger party. The 
 Treasury officers exacted an ample discount from 
 the landholders, a discount which, when Bengal 
 passed under British rule, amounted to three 
 per cent, after a coin had been in circulation a 
 single year, and to five per cent, after the second 
 year, although no actual depreciation had taken 
 place. The landholder demanded a double allow- 
 ance from the middleman, and the middleman 
 extorted a quadruple allowance from the unhappy 
 tiller of the soil. In a long indignant letter on the 
 illegal cesses under which the cultivator groaned, 
 Mr. Keating singles out the "batta" or exchange 
 on old rupees as the most cruel, because the least 
 defined. No recognised standard existed by which 
 to limit the rapacity of the Treasury officers. The 
 Government held them responsible for remitting 
 the net revenue in full, and left them to deduct 
 such a proportion from each coin as they deemed
 
 xiv INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 sufficient to cover all risk of short weight. More- 
 over, so great was the variety of coin in use, that 
 they claimed a further discretion as to what they 
 would receive at all. Cowries (shells), copper coins 
 of every denomination, lumps of copper without 
 any denomination whatever, pieces of iron beaten 
 up with brass, thirty-two different kinds of rupees, 
 from the full sicca to the Viziery, hardly more than 
 half its value, pagodas of various weights, dollars 
 of different standards of purity, gold mohurs worth 
 twenty-five to thirty-two shillings each, and a 
 diversity of Asiatic and European coins whose very 
 names are now forgotten. At some treasuries cow- 
 ries were taken, at others they were not. Some col- 
 lectors accepted payment in gold ; others refused it ; 
 others, again, could not make up their minds either 
 way ; and the miserable peasant never knew whether 
 the coin for which he sold his crop would be of any 
 use to him when he came to pa} 7 his rent.' 
 
 This will enable us to comprehend that in King 
 Edward I.'s time there were current in England 
 ' divers white moneys called pollards, crocards, 
 staldings, eagles, leonines and steepings, artifici- 
 ally made of silver, sulphur, and copper.' And we 
 can imagine how much poor people, who must take 
 such moneys, suffered— how much the rich, who 
 paid them to the poor, throve by them.
 
 PKEFACE, xv 
 
 So badly indeed have governments verified, 
 that it was necessary to call in another verifier. 
 This is a point on which Adam Smith insisted, but i 
 it has dropped out of the common political economy 
 which is derived from him ; his mind was more 
 historical, and in a certain sense more matter-of- 
 fact, than those of his successors, and they have 
 neglected some things which were plainly favourite 
 things with him. On the point we are dealing with 
 he says : — 
 
 ' The currency of a great state, such as France 
 or England, generally consists almost entirely of 
 its own coin. Should this currency, therefore, be 
 at any time worn, dipt, or otherwise degraded be- 
 low its standard value, the State by a reformation 
 of its coin can effectually re-establish its currency. 
 But the currency of a small state, such as Genoa 
 I or Hamburgh, can seldom consist altogether in its 
 own coin ; but must be made up, in a great mea- 
 sure, of the coins of all the neighbouring states 
 with which its inhabitants have a continual inter- 
 course. Such a state, therefore, by reforming its 
 coin will not always be able to reform its currency. 
 If foreign bills of exchange are paid in this cur- 
 rency, the uncertain value of any sum, of what is 
 in its own nature so uncertain, must render the
 
 xvi INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 exchange always very much against such a state, 
 its currency being, in all foreign states, necessarily 
 valued even below what it is worth. In order to 
 remedy the inconvenience to which this disadvan- 
 tageous exchange must have subjected their mer- 
 chants, such small states, when they began to 
 attend to the interest of trade, have frequently 
 enacted that foreign bills of exchange of a certain 
 value should be paid, not in common currency, but 
 by an order upon, or by a transfer in the books of 
 a certain bank, established upon the credit and 
 under the protection of the State; this bank being 
 always obliged to pay, in good and true money, 
 exactly according to the standard of the State. The 
 banks of Venice, Genoa, Amsterdam, Hamburgh 
 and Nuremberg seem to have been all originally 
 established with this view, though some of them 
 may have afterwards been made subservient to 
 other purposes. The money of such banks, being 
 better than the common currency of the country, 
 necessarily bore an agio, which was greater or 
 smaller, according as the currency was supposed to 
 be more or less degraded below the standard of the 
 State. The agio of the Bank of Hamburgh, for 
 example, which is said to be commonly about 
 fourteen per cent., is the supposed difference
 
 PEEFACE. xvii 
 
 between the good standard money of the State, 
 and the dipt, worn, and diminished currency 
 poured into it from all the neighbouring states.' 
 
 This origin of Banking is one of the hundred 
 examples of the difference between the real origin 
 of conspicuous institutions and what a present 
 observer would imagine to have been their origin. 
 Anyone would suppose that they were invented to 
 diffuse modern conveniences and to satisfy refined 
 desires, as they do around us. But, in fact, they 
 are older than those desires. They were created 
 at the sharp pinch of some old necessity, and 
 being in existence and showing an aptitude for new 
 services, were gradually used in new ways. The 
 English have based on horseracing a fine system of 
 calculated betting, but the first horse was tamed 
 for -coarser purposes than that. 
 
 However, it will be said, though in history go- 
 vernment is a bad verifier, though influential classes 
 have in all ages made a profit out of its bad verifi- 
 cation, though a new verifier had to be called in 
 because of its badness, yet at first, and when it 
 undertook the business of coining, it must have 
 had the welfare of the people at heart. But he is 
 always a bold man who speaks of ' origins ' ; most 
 common things are older than history, and we can 
 
 a
 
 xviii INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 only tell by conjecture how they occurred. But 
 conjecture for conjecture, it is more probable that 
 governments began to coin in their own interest, 
 as they have continued to coin for their own profit. 
 Herodotus gives a graphic account of the diffi- 
 culty of great governments who did not use money. 
 ' The Persian king,' he says, ' treasures up his 
 revenue in this way. He melts the gold and silver 
 he receives and pours it into earthen vessels. 
 When the vessel is full and the metal is cooled, he 
 breaks the jar. From these lumps, when he wants 
 money, he cuts off what he needs.' A sovereign 
 who was possessed of large treasures in the precious 
 metals would like very much to have an easier mode 
 of using them. The notion of coining money was 
 borrowed by the Greeks from the East, and it is 
 much more likely that the Babylonian monarchs 
 found an advantage for themselves in dividing their 
 metallic treasures into ascertained and stamped 
 weights, than that they thought much of aiding 
 the traffic of their subjects. Indeed, their standard 
 of value was too high for common purposes. They 
 coined (what was afterwards called) the ' iEginetan 
 talent,' which is about £406 English money. 
 Perhaps other schoolboys, like myself, have fancied 
 that the ancients must have been very rich,
 
 PEEFACE. xix 
 
 ' because they had such big money.' But the 
 puzzle is explained if we suppose the original coins 
 to have been suggested by the convenience of the 
 original coiners, and to have been used for the 
 remittances of despots and the tributes of provinces 
 rather than in petty dealings of trade. 
 
 But any further discussion of this curious sub- 
 ject would be out of place here, and it would be 
 difficult, for we have to carry back our minds to a 
 time when measuring by iceight was a novel inven- 
 tion. There is no ' natural ' unit of weight ; no 
 foot, no cubit ; and it was ages before any sort of 
 standard was agreed upon. The original talent 
 was the weight in the scale, as well as coined 
 money ; it became the principal coin because it was 
 the largest weight. Sir George Lewis justly said 
 that it required a ' good stroke of the imagination ' 
 to conceive a state of civilization in which it was 
 difficult to tell the time of day ; still more would it 
 tax the fancy to conceive a time in which ' standard 
 weights ' came in as new things, and out of them 
 stamped weights or coins grew. We are so used to 
 the candle that we forget it required to be lighted. 
 
 All this long history proves, I think, that we 
 must not reject improvements in our theories of 
 coinage, on the ground that our present theories are
 
 XX INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 universal or ancient ; on the contrary, those theories 
 are very modern and very rare. 
 
 But what improvement is possible ? The 
 answer is plain. A remarkable movement is going 
 on in the world towards a uniformity of coinage 
 between different nations. And it was begun in 
 what seems the way of the nineteenth century ; the 
 way in which Germany was created, and the unity 
 of Italy too ; that is, not by a great number of 
 states, of set design and in combination, chalking 
 out something new, but on the contrary, by some 
 great state acting first for its own convenience, and 
 then other lesser and contiguous nations imitat- 
 ing its plan and falling in with its example. In 
 this way France has now formed a great coinage 
 league, which Switzerland and Italy have already 
 joined, which Austria has agreed to join, which the 
 Provisional Government of Spain has proclaimed, 
 and which the United States have been asked to 
 join. This league, of which the terms are com- 
 pletely stated further on, in fact takes the French 
 standard and coinage for the universal standard and 
 coinage, and uses them without alteration. 
 
 If we could adopt this coinage ourselves without 
 material inconvenience, I confess I, for one, should 
 urge our doing so. The advantages of a single
 
 PKEFACE. xxi 
 
 coinage, which are explained in the following papers, 
 seem to me fully equivalent. But I fear, when 
 looked at strictly, it will be found that the difficulties 
 of such a step are simply insurmountable. And if 
 this is so, and we do nothing, what then ? Why, 
 we shall, to use the vulgar expression, be ' left out 
 in the cold.' Germany has a currency to choose ; 
 none of her many currencies which have descended 
 from her divided States are fit to be her exclusive 
 currency, now that she is one. If things remain as 
 now, she is sure to adopt the French currency ; 
 already there is a proposal in the Federal Parlia- 
 ment that she should take it. 1 Before long all 
 Europe, save England, will have one money, and 
 England be left outstanding with another money. 
 
 This is a selfish reason for looking to our cur- 
 rency, but it is not the only reason. Every person 
 must see that the demand for uniformity in cur- 
 rency is only one case of the growing demand for 
 uniformity in matters between nations really similar. 
 Many subjects, most subjects of legislation, vary 
 between nation and nation ; they depend on national 
 association and peculiar idiosyncrasy and other 
 
 1 In the end Germany chose a currency which assimilates 
 much closer to that of England than to the French ; but elsewhere 
 on the Continent the French system has, as Mr. Bagehot expected, 
 been largely adopted.
 
 xxii INTEENATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 causes. But commerce is everywhere identical ; 
 buying and selling, lending and borrowing, are alike 
 all the world over, and all matters concerning them 
 ought universally to be alike too. In the old mediae- 
 val ' law merchant,' — the universal custom of trade 
 which the international trader took with him from 
 country to country, — there was a recognition of a 
 principle which we want now. The possession of 
 special and very active legislatures by many states 
 has broken up everywhere old customary laws ; the 
 unity we need now must be a unity based on explicit 
 treaty and voluntary agreements. But the idea is 
 the same. Ultimately the world will see one Code 
 de Commerce, and one money as the symbol of it. 
 
 We are, as yet, very distant from so perfect an 
 age. The proposal set forth in these pages does 
 not profess to realize even the monetary part of 
 the ideal. I fear the attempt to found a universal 
 money is not possible now ; I think it would fail 
 because of its size. But I believe we could get as 
 far as two moneys, two leading commercial cur- 
 rencies, which nations could one by one join as they 
 chose, and which, in after time, might be combined ; 
 and though this may fall short of theoretical perfec- 
 tion, to the practical English mind it may seem the 
 more probable for that very reason.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Prefatory Note v 
 
 Preface vi 
 
 I. The Alleged and the Real Advantages of an 
 
 International Coinage 1 
 
 II. The Real Advantage of an International 
 
 Measure of Account 9 
 
 III. The Conditions which an International 
 
 Coinage should Satisfy, and the Reason why 
 no Existing Coinage fulfils them . . . 18 
 
 IV. The Practical Proposals for an International 
 
 Coinage 31 
 
 V. The Result of the Discussion . . . . 49 
 
 VI. The Real Feasibility of Assimilating the 
 
 English and the American Currencies . 58 
 
 Note on Seignorage 09
 
 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 i. 
 
 TEE ALLEGED AND TEE BEAL ADVAN- 
 TAGES OF AN INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 The Eeport of the Decimal Coinage Commissioners 
 is a very sensible, though not a very original, 
 document. Perhaps it was not possible that so 
 many clever men of different kinds of minds would 
 concur in anything remarkably new. On the main 
 point submitted to them they have arrived at a 
 sound conclusion. They were principally asked 
 whether it was or was not wise to alter by two- 
 pence the value of the English sovereign in order 
 to make it equivalent to a 25 franc piece, and 
 they have reported that it would not be advis- 
 able. Instead, the Commissioners suggest that 
 there should be a new International Congress, in 
 which, on account of its magnitude and difficulty, 
 
 B
 
 2 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 the subject should be again discussed, especially 
 with the object of investigating the very disputable 
 proposition that the English sovereign is the best 
 basis for an international currency. But, besides 
 their decision, the Commissioners have given us a 
 vast mass of excellent information, which will enable 
 those who wish to form a sound judgment to attain 
 it without real difficulty. As yet in England this 
 question has never advanced to a practical stage ; 
 it has been a favourite with philosophers, it has in- 
 terested individual men of business, but it has not 
 reached common persons. Now that we have a 
 large mass of true information easily accessible 
 and easily intelligible, the public may begin to 
 form a steady opinion. 
 
 What, then, are the alleged advantages of an 
 International Coinage ? They may be roughly 
 classed thus : — First, — those which concern the 
 convenience of travellers. Secondly, — those which 
 relate to the exchange and transmission of coin. 
 Thirdly, — those which relate to statistics ; and, 
 fourthly, — those which are concerned with general 
 trade. Either in this article or in a succeeding 
 one we shall say a little on each of these. 
 
 As to the alleged convenience of travellers, we 
 cannot think that now and in the policy of England
 
 THE ALLEGED AND THE EEAL ADVANTAGES. 3 
 
 it ought io have the sKghtest weight. No doubt 
 cases can easily be imagined in which such a con- 
 sideration would be most important. If every 
 English county had a different coinage, the vexation 
 to travellers would be unbearable. Twenty years 
 ago each of the Swiss Cantons actually had such 
 a separate coinage ; and, what was worse* the coins 
 of the same name and much the same look had 
 different values in adjoining cantons. Batzen were 
 one thing here and another thing there. In this 
 very evidence, Professor Leone Levi tells us that 
 on returning to Italy, his native country, he has 
 seen the use of monetary reform. Formerly each 
 of the little Italian States had a currency of its 
 own ; in the middle ages sovereigns clung hard 
 to the prerogative of coining, for the sake of the 
 profits of seigniorage,, and because, in case of need, 
 they might ease their treasury by depreciating the 
 standard ;, and on that account ancient Europe, as 
 we may almost call it — the world before modern 
 changes began — was. encumbered with many petty 
 coinages. But now this evil is much diminished. 
 The progress is steady and rapid towards a few 
 great nations and a few great currencies, and 
 therefore travellers are inconvenienced very little. 
 The difficulty which an Englishman finds in ob- 
 
 B 2
 
 4 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 taining francs to use in France is nothing. So 
 long as countries are large and their inhabitants 
 numerous, no one would wish to derange the many 
 transactions of the millions that stay at home to 
 facilitate a little the few transactions of the hun- 
 dreds who go abroad. The good to be realised is 
 not at all equal to the evil to be incurred. 
 
 Secondly, — As to the exchanges, there is much 
 the same objection ; those who send coin abroad 
 are so much fewer than those who use it at home ; 
 the number of exchange transactions is so infinitely 
 less than the number of interior transactions, that 
 it would be extravagant to trouble what is so com- 
 mon in order to improve what is so rare. Some 
 persons who have not much considered the subject, 
 and who have been not unnaturally deceived by 
 the mode in which exchange transactions are 
 calculated and quoted, seem to imagine that if all 
 the world had but one coin there would be no ex- 
 change business. They see that the French exchange 
 is expressed by saying how many francs there are 
 in a sovereign ; they see that the Indian exchange 
 is likewise quoted by saying how many pence and 
 shillings amount to a rupee : and therefore they 
 fancy that if there were only one money in India, 
 in France, and in England, no such calculations
 
 THE ALLEGED AND THE REAL ADVANTAGES. 5 
 
 would be needed. But the principal matter would 
 reappear in an altered form. An exchange calcu- 
 lation is really the cost of remitting money from one 
 country to another. That cost is substantially the 
 same, whether the country from which the money 
 is exported and the country to which it is imported 
 have the same currencies or different currencies. 
 Australia and England have the same currencies ; 
 the sovereign is the main coin in both ; but, never- 
 theless, there is an expense in remitting money to 
 Australia. The remitting banks make a charge 
 for selling their drafts, and this is the common ex- 
 change calculation in a new shape. If France and 
 America had the same currencies as England, it 
 would still happen as now, that bills on Paris or 
 New York would be at a discount or a premium. 
 The amount of money wishing to go eastward 
 across the Atlantic, and the amount wishing to go 
 westward, would then as now settle how much was 
 to be paid in London for bills on New York, and 
 how much was to be paid in New York for bills on 
 London. The original element in exchange trans- 
 actions — the remittance of money — would remain 
 as now, and the two principal accessory difficulties 
 would be just as great. In practical exchange 
 business the rate of interest is to be considered,
 
 6 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 and the state of credit also. If you buy a bill at 
 three months' date you lose a certain sum in inte- 
 rest, depending on the rate for the day, and you 
 rely on the credit, more or less good, of the parties 
 to the bill. These main peculiarities of exchange 
 business are fixed by its nature, and no change of 
 currency can alter them. 
 
 There is indeed a possibility of a slight economy 
 in coining by a single international currency. If 
 a man export bar gold to France, unless he can sell 
 it on terms he thinks fit, he must take it to the 
 French mint and have it coined. But if he ex- 
 ported the same sum in an international currency, 
 he could use it at once ; it would be already coined 
 to his hand. This necessity of coining sometimes 
 at least operates as a friction in exchange trans- 
 actions. A man who takes bar gold or silver to 
 be coined in all countries loses the interest of the 
 money during the whole process of coining, and in 
 some he has to pay a charge besides. He therefore 
 is not ready to export coin so soon as otherwise he 
 would be : the premium on bills rises to a slightly 
 greater height, and bullion does not flow quite so 
 quickly from country to country. 
 
 These minor obstacles to exchange business 
 would be cured by a single pervading currency, and
 
 THE ALLEGED AND THE EEAL ADVANTAGES. 7 
 
 the mere calculations would be easier. The sums 
 to be done would be fewer and less complicated. And 
 perhaps an increase of intelligibility might make 
 exchange business less of a mystic knowledge, — 
 might augment the number of those fit for it, and so 
 lower the cost to the public of sending money from 
 place to place. But minor improvements such as 
 these are not sufficient to justify us in paying the 
 price at which they are to be bought. We cannot 
 make everyone change their monetary habits or 
 their coins to save a few clerks and dealers a few 
 sums, or even to make money flow in and out of 
 London half an iota more readily, or the millionth 
 part of a farthing more cheaply. You must pro- 
 mise the mass of men more than that before they 
 consent to undergo vast trouble for you. 
 
 The same may be said of statistical improve- 
 ment. No doubt a common unit of value, in all 
 civilised countries, would facilitate vastly every 
 kind of monetary comparison. The comparative 
 revenues, for example, of different countries would 
 ' read themselves ; ' you could compare the expen- 
 diture of the various countries of the world, not, 
 as now, by tiresome calculation, but as easily as we 
 can compare the accounts of the Bank of England 
 from week to week. No statistical improvement
 
 8 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 could be comparable. But ordinary people do not 
 care as yet, and for an indefinite period to come 
 are not likely to care, enough about statistical 
 science to undergo themselves daily personal an- 
 noyance for it. The change of the current coin 
 would bore most men much, and most men care 
 little for philosophy. 
 
 Such are the minor, and in comparison of their 
 price almost imaginary, advantages of an inter- 
 national currency ; the real advantages — those 
 which make it worth while to consider whether we 
 ought not to aim at it — are to be found in the state 
 of trade, and we shall describe them in the next 
 article.
 
 II. 
 
 THE REAL ADVANTAGE OF AN INTERNA- 
 TIONAL MEASURE OF ACCOUNT. 
 
 We have explained that some of the alleged reasons 
 for changing our coinage, and for using one which 
 foreigners would use, too, were not sound. The 
 advantages were indisputable, but they were not 
 worth the cost at which they would be purchased. 
 We have now to state the great advantages which 
 make it well worth while to think whether we 
 should not make a great effort to establish an 
 international mone}\ Those who have paid most 
 attention to it for the most part think that it is. 
 The essential point in which an international 
 money would help commerce is very plain. Sup- 
 pose that trade circulars were all expressed in 
 a single currency instead of being, as now, ex- 
 pressed in many currencies, would they not be 
 far easier to understand ? ' I have before me,'
 
 10 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 says Mr. Hendriks, the eminent actuary, 'Mor- 
 gan's British Trade Circular, which is a good 
 example among the many trade circulars which 
 are published. The amounts are there represented 
 in pounds, shillings, and pence ; for instance, we 
 find sums like 44s. 6d. per cwt. — 2s. l\d. per 
 stone.' And illiterate merchants in foreign coun- 
 tries, not knowing our mode of reckoning, are in a 
 perfect puzzle as to what they would get for their 
 goods. Clever and knowing men can make their 
 calculations, but ordinary men cannot. Our im- 
 ports are liable to diminution because the mass 
 of foreign traders do not comprehend our price 
 language. We have to pay the cost of their 
 learning it. Some few know it, — few, that is, in 
 comparison with the mass of men, — and they make 
 a kind of monopoly — a source of privileged irre- 
 ducible profit — out of it. 
 
 Our exports suffer probably more. Mr. 
 Behrens, of Bradford, one of the most eminent 
 authorities on the subject, observes : ' One of the 
 great advantages which we expect from the change 
 of course would be the immensely greater facilities 
 which would be afforded for international trans- 
 actions, particularly in England. I might instance 
 the case of a merchant in Rio wishing to send a cargo
 
 ADVANTAGE OF AN INTERNATIONAL MEASURE. 11 
 
 of coffee to Europe. Supposing that in Eio they 
 had also joined the Convention, and we had not, the 
 Eio merchant would find perhaps by a London price- 
 list so much per ton quoted for coffee ; of course he 
 would have to go through a very elaborate calcu- 
 lation, and take all the risks of the exchanges into 
 account. On the other hand, if he found that at 
 Antwerp or Hamburg (supposing those places had 
 joined the Convention) the price of coffee was stated 
 in the same currency, or in some multiple of it, as 
 his own, and with the same weights and measures, 
 he would make the calculation easily; he would 
 say, the freight is so many centimes per pound, or 
 so many francs per kilogramme, the commission is 
 so much, and all the charges to be added to it 
 amount to so much per cent. He would at once 
 see the total amount, and then he would say, " I 
 will allow one or two per cent, for the risk of the 
 exchanges, and I can at a glance see where I must 
 send my coffee to." And most likely he would prefer 
 sending it to the Continent rather than to England. 
 As I said before, the competition between the dif- 
 ferent nations is so great that already our exports 
 of manufactured goods are more and more reduced 
 to half-manufactured goods. The yarns which 
 must be woven into pieces before they can be worn
 
 12 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 increase every year. Although I do not say that 
 the goods themselves decrease, yet the yarns in- 
 crease, which shows that the manufacturers on the 
 Continent are very much on the alert, and produce 
 more every year. There is therefore a great danger 
 that if the slightest impediment be thrown in the 
 way of English commerce, our Continental customers 
 will soon cease to take even the yarns ; and if they 
 have greater facilities given to them as against our- 
 selves by the use of the same money, they will import 
 cotton direct, and not even take our cotton yarns in 
 future.' And again, Mr. Behrens tells us, ' I had an 
 instance of the difficulty caused by the multiplicity 
 of foreign coins, and that a painful one. I had to 
 draw upon a place at which I did not know whether 
 the ordinary currency was the Prussian thaler or 
 the French franc ; the place was Luxemburg, the 
 amount was £97. I endorsed the bill at the ex- 
 change in francs ; the party upon whom it was 
 drawn said, " Prussian money is our legal tender, 
 and I will not pay the bill except in Prussian 
 money." The conversion from francs into Prussian 
 money, and then back into English money, cost 
 me upon this £91, 45 francs.' That is to say, an 
 exporter of foreign goods cannot tell at a glance 
 what money he will be entitled to, nor in what form
 
 ADVANTAGE OF AN INTERNATIONAL MEASURE. 13 
 
 of currency he will be paid ; a sort of uncertainty 
 hovers over all the subject. 
 
 In every newspaper throughout the mercantile 
 world prices ought to be quoted in the same manner. 
 Commerce has very many and very natural difficul- 
 ties. Distance of place, difference of speech, are irre- 
 movable impediments. We may conquer them, but 
 we cannot remove them ; nature made them, not 
 man, and man cannot hope to foresee the time when 
 they shall exist no longer. But the painful existence 
 of real obstacles is the very reason why mankind 
 should not invent artificial ones. We are encum- 
 bered in our commerce already, — do not let us be 
 more encumbered than we can help. Yet we 
 voluntarily invent impediments if one set of us 
 count in one fashion and the others count in 
 different fashions. 
 
 Persons who look at the facts at a distance may 
 fancy that this diversity of monetary expression is 
 a minor difficulty. But, in fact, it is not conquered. 
 English bankers are supposed to be — perhaps are — 
 the most educated part of the English business 
 world. Yet how few ever look with care at the 
 accounts of the Bank of France. An enormous 
 increase of late years in the note circulation has 
 happened without their heeding it. Except from
 
 14 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 some translation in a City article, they have not an 
 idea how much bullion the Bank of France now 
 holds. Yet all English bankers know that, after the 
 amount of bullion in the Bank of England, one of the 
 most imperative influences upon our money market 
 is the bullion in the Bank of France. Of course all 
 bankers can turn francs into pounds, and some 
 think they will ; but few ever do. If the accounts 
 of the two great Banks were rendered in identical 
 language they would be criticised with equal 
 accuracy. But now, in England, the accounts of 
 the Bank of France, in certain cases the most in- 
 structive and important, are altogether neglected. 
 
 In other trades we see the same. The diver- 
 sity of monetary expression is an effectual bar to 
 common commercial understanding. Unquestion- 
 ably great firms employ skilled clerks, who trans- 
 late these difficulties — whether of Norway, or Aus- 
 tria, or India — very rapidly, but ordinary traders 
 cannot keep such clerks. Their profits are not 
 great enough ; their business is not large enough. 
 They cannot export to these countries of confusing 
 currency, because they do not know really what 
 their goods will fetch — how many pounds, shillings, 
 and sixpences their price will bring home. 
 
 No doubt certain skilled exporters know all this,
 
 ADVANTAGE OF AN INTEENATIONAL MEASUKE. 15 
 
 and make a large profit on their knowledge. One 
 of the most intelligent said before the Commission 
 that an international money would be disadvan- 
 tageous to him, because it would render unneces- 
 sary a kind of knowledge which he possessed,, but 
 which merchants at large did not share. The 
 democracy of Trade, if we may so say, is excluded 
 by the present monetary complexity ; little men, 
 used to small transactions, cannot grapple with it, 
 and yet it is the lesson of all our recent legislation 
 upon commerce that we must facilitate the trans- 
 actions of the many, and leave to take care of 
 themselves the transactions of the few. The more 
 traders are able to trade, the larger and the better 
 will our commerce be. 
 
 But will the nation gain ? If we ask the nation 
 to make a great change, we must show that as a 
 whole it will gain a great benefit, — not only that 
 certain persons belonging to it will gain one. The 
 answer is that an increase of commerce does benefit 
 everyone. An augmentation of imports of course 
 benefits the people, because they have greater 
 facilities in buying what they want and consuming 
 what they wish. An increase of exports, too, is a 
 benefit not merely to the exporter, but tfcflthe nation, 
 for it cannot be permanent without an increase of
 
 16 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 imports, which the nation can use, and it employs 
 in the most profitable manner labour and capital 
 which would otherwise be spent in a way compara- 
 tively unprofitable. 
 
 At present, too, in many cases, international 
 transactions are managed by a rough calculation, 
 which means a calculation favourable to the cal- 
 culator, and upon which he charges a percentage. 
 In the French book trade, for instance, a buyer 
 in England has commonly to give 12 shillings 
 for a book costing in Paris 12 francs. No one 
 contends that such is the just exchange, but it is 
 an easy exchange, by which no individual purchaser 
 loses very much, and by which considerable traders 
 probably derive considerable gains. 
 
 To sum up, an international money would 
 enable smaller people to trade, and new unskilled 
 people to trade ; it would abolish a toll which the 
 consumer pays, and remove an encumbrance which 
 the merchant feels. There would be a gain to every- 
 one worth everyone's making a certain sacrifice to 
 reach. But this advantage cannot be reached with- 
 out a large change. It involves what is not always 
 seen, not only an identity of certain coins, but an 
 identity of the common money of account. You 
 must make the monetary language of trade circulars
 
 ADVANTAQE OF AN INTERNATIONAL MEASURE. 17 
 
 identical, or you will not have effected your object. 
 You will not have made quotations identical, and 
 without that you will not augment trade much, 
 help small traders or untrained traders much, or 
 benefit the consumer much. Unless you make a 
 great change, you will not achieve anything worth 
 much cost, or that justifies inflicting a difficulty on 
 the many. 
 
 How this change is to be effected so that it 
 may gain most and cost least we shall immediately 
 consider.
 
 18 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE CONDITIONS WHICH AN INTERNA- 
 TIONAL COINAGE SHOULD SATISFY, 
 AND THE REASONS WHY NO EXISTING 
 COINAGE FULFILS THEM. 
 
 In the last two articles we discussed the reasons 
 which were alleged on behalf of an International 
 Currency ; we showed that though some of the 
 gains most loudly spoken of were either trifling or 
 unreal, yet that one class of the gains — the gain to 
 trade — was so real and so important that it would 
 be well worth a great sacrifice to obtain it. If 
 prices were quoted in the same terms in every 
 newspaper in every country, trade would be easier 
 and trade would be larger. But what sort of 
 currency must this universal one be, and what are 
 the difficulties that must be conquered before we 
 can possess it ? 
 
 Such a currency to be fit for the present needs
 
 THE CONDITIONS IT SHOULD SATISFY, ETC. 19 
 
 of commerce, and to be on a level with economic 
 theory, must satisfy three conditions. 
 
 First, — it must be founded on a single standard, 
 not on a double. This may seem at first an easy 
 condition, but we shall soon see that many existing 
 currencies do not satisfy it. It means that a con- 
 tract to pay a sum of money shall be satisfied only 
 by the payment of a specified portion of one known 
 metal ; if that metal is gold, then by so much gold ; 
 if that metal be silver, then by so much silver. 
 Under the contrary system — that of a double 
 standard — the contract may be satisfied in two 
 ways ; the debtor has an alternative. He may pay 
 either so much gold or so much silver as he likes, 
 and therefore there are two chances for deprecia- 
 tion. Whichever metal declines in value the debtor 
 is sure to select, and that metal so impaired the 
 creditor must receive. One set of causes reduces, 
 or tends to reduce, the value of gold, and so may 
 injure the creditor ; another one reduces, or tends 
 to reduce, that of silver, and thus hurts the creditor 
 also. No change tends to benefit him. If either 
 gold or silver rise in value he will not get it ; his 
 debtor has the option — he will pay the metal which 
 has not risen. A kind of mist floats over some 
 minds ; they fancy that by using a currency of two 
 
 c 2
 
 20 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 metals they evade the danger of the depreciation of 
 either. But they are really injured by the depre- 
 ciation of both. The impaired metal will always be 
 preferred, because it is cheaper. 
 
 Secondty, — the new coinage, to suit present 
 commerce, must have a high gold unit. The sums 
 to be paid are large, and therefore the medium in 
 which they are paid should be costly. Silver is the 
 characteristic currency of early nations and poor 
 nations. By comparison it is plentiful, and there- 
 fore cheap ; the small amounts which early trade 
 requires were best paid in it, and therefore it was 
 used. But now large transactions require a dear 
 paying medium. The more costly the unit the 
 fewer the pieces to be counted, and the easier the 
 use of the currency. The same principle applies to 
 reckoning on paper, which is, though it may not 
 seem so, really more important than paying by coin. 
 The use of arithmetic applies not only to actual 
 business, but to contemplated business. If a mer- 
 chant begins to think of exporting goods, he reckons 
 what he must buy at and what he must sell at. 
 Whether he in fact export or not is an after matter, 
 depending on the profit he finds and the capital he 
 has. But any way, he counts on paper, and the 
 unit of account is therefore more important than
 
 THE CONDITIONS IT SHOULD SATISFY, ETC. 21 
 
 the unit of coinage. The unit of account concerns 
 all possible transactions, whether they are resolved 
 upon or not ; coin is only used in actual transac- 
 tions, and not by any means in all those. A high 
 unit of reckoning is of primary importance, now 
 that people always think of trading largely ; and 
 the best way of attaining it is by selecting some 
 costly gold coin and making it our unit. 
 
 A few years ago there was such a fear of the 
 sudden depreciation of gold that nations would have 
 hesitated to choose it for their money. Some 
 nations even which already used it in fright aban- 
 doned it. But experience shows that the panic was 
 excessive, and that the depreciation which gold is 
 undergoing is too minute and too gradual to be very 
 important. Very possibly if we selected silver new 
 mining discoveries might begin to reduce its value. 
 The notion of a commodity whose cost is constant, 
 and whose relative value to other articles does not 
 alter, is imaginary. Monetary business like all 
 business is rough ; we must take the metal that 
 suits best on the whole. The risks of depreciation 
 being only what we see, we had best take gold be- 
 cause we can pay in it most easily and reckon in it 
 most easily. 
 
 Thirdly, — the new coinage must be a decimal
 
 22 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 coinage. Every new coinage probably will be so, 
 and a system which is to include nations already 
 having a decimal coinage must be so. There is of 
 course no kind of superior naturalness in a decimal 
 division ; it is only more familiar to us because we 
 have ten fingers ; if we had twelve fingers as some 
 persons had (and physiologists say the breed might 
 have been preserved), a duodecimal division would 
 have been equally natural. But we cannot change 
 the human frame or reverse past history. Our 
 arithmetical system is a decimal system, and it is 
 plainly good that our coinage system should be the 
 same. We should then count all money by tens, 
 just as we reckon on paper all things by tens. 
 
 Fourthly, — the new system must be one which 
 will do no violence to national jealousies. It will 
 not do for one nation to say to any other, still less 
 to all others — ' My coinage is better than yours ; 
 my trade is larger, and my coinage better known 
 than yours ; therefore do you adopt my coinage and 
 give up your own.' Most nations — all great nations 
 perhaps — are too sensitive and too proud to bear 
 such language. The desire for an international 
 coinage is not an imperious desire. The advantages 
 it promises are substantial and real, but they do not 
 at once strike mankind. The mass of residents in
 
 THE CONDITIONS IT SHOULD SATISFY, ETC. 23 
 
 every country will say — ' We do not trade abroad ; 
 we do not travel abroad; we can use our native 
 currency very well ; why should we change it ? Why 
 should we learn a new system ? We do not care 
 about foreign currencies.' There is a great mass of 
 stagnant selfishness in all nations which will oppose 
 this improvement, as well as all others. We must 
 not reinforce that selfishness by wounded national 
 pride ; if we ask the mass of English people to take 
 the French coinage, or the mass of French to take 
 the English, we shall not prevail ; the French will 
 say — ' We will not yield to England ; ' the English 
 will say — ' We will not yield to France.' Any plan 
 must be based on mutual concession. Everyone 
 may hope to gain much, but everyone must sacri- 
 fice something. 
 
 These four conditions taken together altogether 
 forbid the idea of adopting as the international 
 coinage any present coinage. In terms the last 
 condition forbids it for reasons of policy, but the 
 three first equally forbid it for economic and intrinsic 
 reasons. The French coinage, though widely pro- 
 pagated by the immense influence of France, is a 
 bad coinage. It is a decimal coinage, and is so far 
 good ; but it is based on a very low unit and uses a 
 double standard, which is absurd. The history of
 
 24 INTEENATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 the French coinage is a remarkable example of the 
 rash application of an incomplete theory. The 
 French revolutionary legislators found the old 
 French coinage in a most depreciated condition ; it 
 had originally been based on the pound weight of 
 silver. But by continual tampering the livre, re- 
 presenting that pound, had come to be worth only 
 10c?. The old division had been into 20 sous of 12 
 denier s each, like our own ; but as the French pound 
 had come to be so very different from the English, 
 the subordinate coins were utterly diverse in the 
 two countries, and the French ones too small to be 
 of any use. The revolutionary legislators saw one 
 part of the evil and remedied it. They abolished 
 the old confused subsidiary coins, and introduced an 
 easy decimal division. But they did not perceive the 
 rest of the evil. They left the unit of account nearly 
 unaltered ; the new franc is substantially the old livre. 
 They never thought that they were by then im- 
 provements entailing a burden on France. If they 
 had introduced no change, it would have been easy 
 to persuade France now to make a complete change. 
 To gain at once both a decimal system and a high 
 unit would have been incontestably worth a great 
 effort. But now that France has, by a great sacri- 
 fice, attained one of these conveniences, it is hard
 
 THE CONDITIONS IT SHOULD SATISFY, ETC. 25 
 
 to ask her to make a second sacrifice to gain the 
 other. The bore of the low unit affects the few 
 more than the many — the rich more than the poor 
 — the cultivated rather than the ignorant ; those 
 who by their inertia are hardest to move are, in 
 fact, those who would gain the least. 
 
 The American currency is in a condition yet 
 more curious. ' On the recognition,' says Mr. 
 Ruggles, the American Commissioner at the Paris 
 Congress, ' by England, in 1783, of the political 
 independence of the United States, their then exists 
 ing political organisation, " The Congress of the 
 Confederation," deemed it proper, also, to throw 
 off the monetary yoke of pounds, shillings, pence 
 and farthings. On the 6th of July, 1785, this Con- 
 tinental Congress unanimously passed the memor- 
 able monetary ordinance reported by the " Grand 
 Committee of Thirteen," of which Rufus King, one 
 of the wisest and most far-seeing of the statesmen 
 of America, was a member. Not only did it omit 
 in any way to recognise the pound, but it distinctly 
 brought in and established the dollar, as the per- 
 manent monetary unit of the United States. Its 
 precise weight was fixed by a subsequent ordinance, 
 passed on the 8th of August, 1786, which further 
 provided for the issue of a gold coin of ten dollars,
 
 26 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 to bear the impress of the eagle, which imperial 
 emblem had been selected in 1782, in view of the 
 national sovereignty then clearly discerned in the 
 future. What was far more important, the ordin- 
 ance expressly provided that the dollar should be 
 decimally divided.' 
 
 Considering how many exchange sums have been 
 caused by the difference between the two currencies 
 this expediency of throwing off the ' yoke of the £ ' 
 is dubious. In order to avoid a fancied subjection, 
 America imposed on herself, and England too, a 
 most real bondage of calculation. 
 
 The unit selected — the dollar of 4s. 2d. — is far 
 too low to be selected by other nations as the basis 
 of a currency ; and the effect of the sudden American 
 innovation, as of the sudden French, has been to 
 create in the world a currency of half-and-half 
 merit, which has one excellence, that of a decimal 
 division, but which is otherwise unfit for interna- 
 tional adoption. As every new coin, as every new 
 international reckoning, at least, is a new evil, the 
 former rashness both of France and America is a 
 difficulty to themselves now. Both created some- 
 thing so good that nations who have it do not like 
 to lose it, but also so bad that those who have it 
 not do not wish to take it.
 
 THE CONDITIONS IT SHOULD SATISFY, ETC. 27 
 
 The English currency is not subject to the same 
 defects, but it is still faulty. Even were it politically 
 possible to ask several great nations to adopt exactly 
 the coinage of any one, the English coinage would 
 not be one which it would be economically advisable 
 to choose. No doubt it contains the great merit 
 which the French and American currencies want ; it 
 has a high gold unit. No doubt also it has totally 
 escaped the ' besetting sin ' of the double standard ; 
 the English may claim the discovery of the true 
 principles on that matter. But then the English 
 coinage is not decimal. It contains the old division 
 of the pound, first into l-20th and then into l-12th, 
 which belonged to the middle ages. You could not 
 propose that any nation which does not possess it 
 should adopt it as it stands. The contrast between 
 the French currencies and the English is perhaps 
 characteristic of the two countries. The French is 
 a symmetrical embodiment of imperfect principles ; 
 the English a confused embodiment of the best prin- 
 ciples. The French looks quite right till you have 
 to examine and study it ; the English looks quite 
 wrong till you see what it really is, and what such 
 things ought to be. The French has a good 
 ' manner ' and a bad ' meaning ; ' the English an 
 excellent meaning, but a wretched manner. The
 
 28 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 first sight sees what is good in France ; the first 
 sight does not see what is good in England. 
 
 The Spanish, and the remaining currencies of 
 the world, need not for the present purpose be dis- 
 cussed. They have no claims to be put forward as 
 universal currencies, and no one does so put them 
 forward. The conclusion we come to is that no 
 existing coinage is fit as it stands for international 
 uses. And this is really the conclusion which 
 should have been expected. The conditions of an 
 international currency, as we have stated them, 
 are complex, and are very little likely to have been 
 satisfied in rude ages. The double standard itself, 
 though absurd in theory, is, if we look at history, 
 rather plausible. Silver was the old currency of 
 Europe; gold a mere article of dealing and traffic. 
 Silver is the best currency for early times, because 
 it is cheap, just as gold is the best currency for 
 ripe ages, because it is dear. Gradually there has 
 been a transition from the metal of early times to 
 the metal of late times. But it is not possible to 
 discard the metal of early times ; the small trans- 
 actions in which it is used are as numerous as ever, 
 perhaps more numerous than ever. The two metals 
 must be kept in use together ; but the true system, 
 the English system, is in the last degree refined.
 
 THE CONDITIONS IT SHOULD SATISFY, ETC. 29 
 
 It makes the dearer metal — gold — the standard, — 
 uses gold alone in considerable payments. But it 
 uses silver as a medium for small payments, and 
 discards all notion of a real comparison of its value 
 with the value of gold. Twenty shillings do not 
 really make a pound. The value is arbitrary, and 
 the quantity coined is arbitrary. Gold coinage 
 circulates at its true value, and an artificial silver 
 coinage circulates at an abnormal value, because of 
 its regulated quantity. Naturally it was long before 
 this nice expedient was detected, and till then both 
 metals circulated together at this equation or at 
 that. The common sense of mankind says we want 
 them both, and we must have them both ; the 
 arrangements were left to some few who said they 
 understood them. 
 
 The high gold unit, again, is not wanted in 
 early ages. People only want cheap things and 
 small coins. A high ' reckoning engine ' is useless. 
 Nor would a decimal coinage have been compre- 
 hensible. The Arabic numerals which we use have 
 made 10 seem like a law of nature ; but in the 
 middle ages, and before these numerals were used, 
 people did not think so much of ten. They thought 
 most of halves and quarters ; of multiples of 2 and 
 4. All our present requirements have reference to
 
 30 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 the modern world, and were not imaginable in the 
 old world. We must not therefore be surprised if 
 we have to invent a new currency, and do not find 
 a fit one ready. What that new one ought to be 
 we shall next discuss.
 
 31 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE PRACTICAL PROPOSALS FOR AN 
 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 We have before considered the motives which re- 
 quire and the principles which should regulate an 
 International Coinage. We have now to examine 
 the practical proposals that have been put forward : 
 we must see how far they accord with the prin- 
 ciples, and how far they would insure the promised 
 advantages. Unfortunately, according to the con- 
 clusions of our last article, every system of inter- 
 national coinage must be encumbered with a great 
 evil : no existing system of coinage is at all fit for 
 universal adoption. Whatever new one is chosen, 
 there must be a great change in our common 
 modes of reckoning, and there is no difficulty 
 greater than this. 
 
 The most prominent proposal is that of the 
 Congress of Paris— to coin in this country and in 
 others a 25-franc piece, which should circulate in
 
 32 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 all, and be a legal tender in them all. The parti- 
 cular coin — a 25-franc piece — is chosen, because 
 by mere accident a coin of nearly that value is at 
 present in circulation in several very important 
 States. The English sovereign differs by 2d. only 
 from that value ; in France, any multiple of five 
 francs would be intelligible, and so in Italy and 
 Switzerland ; Spain has already a nearly equal 
 coin ; Austria and Sweden are ready to strike one. 
 The Commissioners describe the proposal in words 
 which on account of their importance it is best to 
 have before us. ' The recommendations,' they say, 
 ' which were made by the Paris Conference, with a 
 view of introducing gold coins which should be 
 common to all countries, are — 
 
 ' III. That all gold coins hereafter struck in 
 any of the countries which are parties to the Con- 
 vention should either be of the value of five francs 
 or multiples of that sum. 
 
 * IV. That a gold coin of the value of 25 francs 
 should be struck by such countries as prefer it, and 
 be admitted as an international coin. 
 
 ' The effect of these recommendations if adopted 
 would be to make a gold coin of five francs the basis 
 of the international currency, and to substitute the 
 proposed coin of 25 francs in England for the sove-
 
 THE PEACTICAL PROPOSALS. 33 
 
 freign, in the United States for the half-eagle, and 
 we presume in Spain for the doblon. In Austria 
 and in Sweden a coin of this value would also be 
 struck. 
 
 Grains. 
 
 The Spanish doblon, or piece of 10 esoudos, contains of 
 
 fine gold 116-487 
 
 The half-eagle 116-100 
 
 The sovereign 113-001 
 
 And the new coin of the value of 25 francs would contain 112-008 
 
 ' As regards the coin of this country, the change, 
 therefore, which would be required would be to 
 diminish the quantity of fine gold contained in the 
 sovereign by about a grain (or, more accurately, 
 •993 of a grain). The diminution in value would 
 be about Id. (more accurately, 2-126d.) in the pound, 
 equal to *88, or very nearly 9-10ths per cent. The 
 existing shilling, which is only a token coin, would 
 remain in circulation, representing l-20th part of 
 the new as it now does of the existing sovereign ; 
 and, in like manner, the sixpenny-piece, the penny, 
 halfpenny, and farthing would remain, representing 
 the same parts of the new sovereign as they now do of 
 the existing sovereign. The reduction of the value 
 of the sovereign must practically involve that of the 
 pound.' 
 
 But the great objection to this plan is that on 
 the face of it ; it does not attain the object. A coin 
 
 D
 
 34 INTEKNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 of 25 francs' value is to be universal, but nothing 
 else is to be universal ; the object, as we showed, 
 which it was desirable to attain was the identity 
 of money of account. Quotations were to be the 
 same in different countries ; an English merchant 
 taking up a French newspaper was to be able to 
 understand the money, and a French merchant 
 taking up an English one. But the proposal from 
 Paris does not effect this. Accounts would not 
 be kept identically abroad and at home after the 
 change any more than now. The French written 
 money would still be francs and centimes ; the 
 25-franc piece with respect to it would be what the 
 half-crown is in the present English money of 
 account ; it would be a circulating coin, but it would 
 not be a calculating term. If an Englishman saw 
 that the Bank of France had 1,162,665,670 francs 
 in its till, he would have to divide by 25 to know how 
 much in international money that was ; and he can 
 obtain this quite nearly enough for most purposes, 
 and the number of our present sovereigns equivalent 
 to that sum, by the very same division. The case 
 is still worse with the subordinate divisions. If an 
 Englishman sees that cotton is 102 francs 50 cen- 
 times at Havre, or wheat 36 francs 50 centimes, what 
 is he the better for the international coin ? He has a
 
 THE PRACTICAL PROPOSALS. 35 
 
 sum to work to turn the printed quotation into the 
 new coin, and if he has a sum to work he may just 
 as well remain as now; he can turn francs and 
 centimes into the old money just as well as into the 
 new money. 
 
 The inconvenience of changing the value of the 
 sovereign would be very considerable ; it would be 
 such as it would be worth while to incur for a great 
 object, but not such as it would be wise to incur for 
 a small one. If we are to change our currency, let 
 us so change it that we may be intelligible to 
 foreigners, and that foreigners may be intelligible 
 to us. To make a slight alteration would cost most 
 of the price, and not obtain most of the advantage. 
 
 A controversy of much delicacy has, however, 
 been started. It is said that England does not now 
 charge a seignorage on the coinage of gold, but that 
 under the proposed system she might begin to do so. 
 The difference between the new sovereign of twenty- 
 five francs and the present sovereign is only one per 
 cent. ; we might charge one per cent, for coining 
 the new one, and so keep the value unchanged. 
 What was taken from the quantity might be added 
 by the charge of the Government. But whatever 
 be the defects or merits of this ingenious proposal, 
 which are elsewhere discussed, it is plainly too re- 
 
 » 2
 
 36 INTEENATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 fined for the mass of men. If you took twopence 
 out of every sovereign you might have a mob cry- 
 ing, ' Give us our old twopence ! ' and there would 
 be no concurrence of enlightened opinion to resist 
 the mob. On these very refined points you must 
 never expect much agreement. Out of the many 
 able minds which take part in the discussion, few 
 have the knowledge, few the leisure, and still fewer 
 the mental calmness to understand them. In this 
 case the objection would be plain ; adversaries would 
 say, ' You are defrauding the debtor by clipping the 
 sovereign ; by his contract he was to have so much 
 gold paid him, and Parliament, without his consent, 
 without even asking him, says he is to have less 
 gold ; Parliament might as well say that a man 
 who had bought a hundred bales of cotton was only 
 to have ninety bales.' Every one can comprehend 
 this objection, but few could understand the reply, 
 and hardly any one would feel sure about it. 
 
 Nor is it necessary to consider this refined expe- 
 dient, except as a matter of principle. The proposal 
 of the Conference of Paris that France should coin 
 a 25-franc piece, and leave the rest of the French 
 currency as it is, and that the English should alter 
 their sovereign by 2d., and leave the rest of their 
 currency as it is, must be rejected on plainer
 
 THE PEACTICAL PEOPOSALS. 37 
 
 grounds. It does not give us a common money of 
 account; it does not give us an entire common 
 currency ; it does not ensure that quotations of 
 price should be identical ; it only provides a single 
 circulating coin. 
 
 A second plan is that which the Coinage Com- 
 missioners themselves recommend — the use of the 
 English sovereign as an international coin. But it 
 is not easy to believe that foreign nations would be 
 content with a plan so simple to us and so difficult 
 to them. If the plan is to give us what we want, 
 it must involve a complete abolition and total disuse 
 of the entire Continental coinage ; we shall keep our 
 principal coin, but they will lose all their coins. A 
 mere common coin, as we have seen, be it the 
 sovereign or the 25 -franc piece, is not in itself of 
 primary use : what is requisite is a common language 
 of commerce — a single money of account. Now, 
 to induce the French to reckon in sovereigns and to 
 keep their ledgers in pounds sterling would be a 
 most difficult task. It would be said that it was a 
 stratagem of England to advance English interests ; 
 it would excite national jealousy, and awaken in- 
 herited ill-will. No doubt, the English pound is 
 the most important unit of account in the whole 
 commercial world ; perhaps, though this is much 
 
 386374
 
 38 INTEENATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 more disputable, the sovereign is the most important 
 coin in the world ; but a common French peasant 
 does not know this, and would not believe this ; no 
 reasoning would bring it home to his apprehension ; 
 in spite of all arguments, he would think he was 
 yielding to an enemy, and that he was being cheated 
 by an enemy. 
 
 The unit suggested for an International money 
 most contrasted with the sovereign and the 25-franc 
 piece is that proposed by M. Chevalier. These 
 two suggestions are founded on the notion of 
 adhering as far as possible to existing coins, but 
 M. Chevalier discards that principle. He says, in 
 substance, ' If you take the 25-franc piece, you will 
 have the same difficulty out of France as if you 
 proposed a new unit, and if you take the sovereign, 
 you will have the same difficulty everywhere out of 
 England ; it is best to go back to principle, and 
 take the best unit — the scientific unit ; you will 
 then have a sound reason in which all nations will 
 concur ; you will surmount the difficulty of asking 
 one nation to concede to another; you will be 
 better in theory, and you will not be worse in 
 practice.' But then comes the question, what is 
 that best, — that scientific unit? What is it that 
 all nations will see to be inherently preferable ?
 
 THE PRACTICAL PROPOSALS. 39 
 
 What is it that for its abstract merit they will be 
 willing to choose ? 
 
 To this M. Chevalier gives what we must call a 
 French answer ; he founds himself upon the Metric 
 system of weights and measures ; and he alleges 
 not only that this system is in practice more 
 convenient, but also that it is in some way more 
 perfect than other systems in science and theory, 
 which indisputably it is not. There is no unit of 
 weight or unit of measure in itself and by any 
 intrinsic quality better than all other weights. 
 Whatever selection you make must be arbitrary. 
 Six yards long means six times the length of a 
 certain rod in London ; six pounds means six times 
 the weight of a certain standard solid in London. 
 There is nothing essentially good in this weight 
 or this length; it happens to be fixed upon, but 
 different ones might have been fixed upon. The 
 French metre is the '10,000,000th part of the 
 quadrant of the meridian passing through France 
 from Dunkirk to Frementara,' — which is as arbi- 
 trary a length as could be found. The French 
 unit of weight is the gramme, which is a ' cubic 
 centimetre, or the 100th part of a metre of distilled 
 water of the temperature of melting ice' — as 
 arbitrary and even as curious a thing as can be
 
 40 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 imagined. The notion of most Frenchmen that 
 there is something very scientific here is an error ; 
 it was an arbitrary choice, like any other, as good 
 and no better than any other. 
 
 But it is upon the Metric system that M. 
 Chevalier grounds his coinage scheme. He justly 
 says that originally the principal coin was a prin- 
 cipal weight in some metal; the pound sterling 
 was a real pound's weight of silver in the beginning ; 
 so was the Livre Tournois, which down to the 
 Revolution continued to be the great coin of France. 
 This is the simple notion of a ' coin ' — some 
 simple weight of a precious metal authenticated by 
 Government, or in some way. M. Chevalier with 
 great learning and great acuteness exemplifies this, 
 as in the Chinese system and in other systems ; 
 and he argues that because the original coin was a 
 simple weight in some metal, so the new one should 
 be too ; any fractions are an incurable defect. 
 Thus he objects to the 25-franc piece, because when 
 written in the Metric system of weights it appears 
 as 0*32557 grammes; and to the English sovereign, 
 because its expression is complex too. But we 
 cannot agree to this logic. It does not follow that 
 the new coin ought to be a weight very simply 
 expressible, because oldest coins in their origin
 
 THE PRACTICAL PROPOSALS. 41 
 
 were very simply expressible. The notion of a coin 
 began so ; it could not else be made intelligible to 
 barbarians : but we are not barbarians ; we know 
 what a coin is well enough. We do not care what 
 exact weight a sovereign is ; we know it contains 
 a certain weight of gold, because that gold is the 
 source of its value, but we never in practice think 
 about it. In fact, the sovereign is not easily ex- 
 pressible in English weights. An ounce troy coins 
 into 3^ sovereigns, or 480 ounces make 1,869 
 sovereigns, and you cannot state it more easily. 
 But no difficulty arises ; we do not think of the 
 origin of coins ; we do not care what was the 
 relation in the first times between simple weight 
 and primary coin. We use our sovereigns, and we 
 do not care. We understand fractions well enough 
 to be able to weigh great masses of sovereigns 
 when we want. A simple equation between the 
 unit of weight and the unit of coinage may be a 
 theoretical advantage — a determining reason for 
 choosing between two or more units equally con- 
 venient, but it is not a primary quality in such 
 coins ; it is not an essential requisite. 
 
 M. Chevalier's exact proposal is that the new 
 unit should be a piece of 10 grammes, weighing, 
 as he says, ' once and a half the volume of a piece
 
 42 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 of 20 francs.' But why ten grammes' weight ? 
 Why not one gramme, since a gramme is the unit 
 of weight ? It seems a gramme is too small for 
 a unit ; you could not make a nice money by 
 multiplying it and dividing it. But surely this 
 shows plainly that the entire question is one of 
 convenience and utility ; that the ' unit of weight ' 
 has no indefeasible title to be a ' unit of money ' ; 
 that we must judge whether it should be so by a 
 comparison of that advantage with other advantages. 
 
 The real question is simple ; it is only this : 
 Which is more important for a new international 
 coin — an easily expressible relation to the unit of 
 weight of the Metric system, or an easily expressible 
 relation to present coins and present moneys of 
 account? M. Chevalier decides in favour of the 
 former, but we cannot agree with him. We attach 
 no special scientific value to the French Metric 
 system ; we do not think it of primary importance 
 that the unit of value should be a simple (though 
 arbitrary) element of the unit of weight ; we regard 
 it as very important that the new coin should be 
 easily expressible in old coins. 
 
 The last of the most remarkable systems which 
 have been proposed for an international coin is one 
 of singular ingenuity. It was proposed by the
 
 THE PRACTICAL PROPOSALS. 43 
 
 present Master of the Mint — one of the English 
 representatives at the Congress of Paris — that 
 10 francs should be taken as the unit of value, and 
 that a gold piece of that value (it would be nearly 
 8s.) should be struck to represent it. The prin- 
 cipal advantage of this scheme is plain. Those 
 nations who now reckon in francs would be able 
 after the change to reckon in francs ; those who 
 now use the French coinage, or, as we should now 
 call it, the coinage of the International Convention, 
 could continue to use it ; the novelty is identical 
 with a great reality. The exact scheme, and the 
 way it seems to have suggested itself at the Congress 
 of Paris, is thus described by its authors, the 
 British delegates : — 
 
 ' The renunciation of the principle of a currency 
 based on a standard of silver seemed to imply and 
 necessitate the adoption of a common unit of higher 
 value than that at present prevailing in countries 
 not possessing a gold standard, and the piece of 
 five francs was that which, in spite of individual 
 objections, found favour with the majority of the 
 Commissioners. 
 
 ' Exception was taken to it by some of the 
 members for the practical reason of its insignificant 
 dimensions, and upon the more theoretical ground
 
 44 INTEENATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 that it does not perfectly harmonize with the deci- 
 mal system. 
 
 4 We shared this opinion, and were prepared to 
 have suggested as preferable a 10-franc piece, which 
 would not only be free from these drawbacks, but 
 would be more likely to be acceptable in England, 
 which is accustomed to the higher unit of the 
 sovereign. 
 
 ' A new British coin having the same quantity 
 of gold as the 10-franc piece, with the same propor- 
 tion of alloy, would be within f cZ. of 8s. in value. 
 Such a piece could be legally introduced into circu- 
 lation as an additional member of the present coin- 
 age, provided it was issued as a token coin for 8s., 
 and made a legal tender to a limited amount only, 
 such as £4, or ten pieces. It could have inscribed 
 upon it "10 francs" in addition to its current 
 value of " 8 shillings." This coin would become 
 the unit of computation, the new pound or metrical 
 pound, or it might be made the tenth part of a new 
 metrical pound, if a denomination of higher value 
 were demanded. We would thus become possessed 
 of an international coin. 
 
 ' The scheme of coinage which it would be the 
 means of suggesting is one resting upon the penny 
 reduced 4 per cent, in value, and would include a
 
 THE PEACTICAL PEOPOSALS. 45 
 
 si*ef piece of ten such pence, in addition to the 
 gold piece of 100 pence. The ultimate adjustment 
 of the European and American coinages contem- 
 plated would present : — 
 
 ' In the French coinage : 
 
 ' 1 franc divided into 100 centimes ; 
 ' In the American : 
 
 ' 5 francs (dollar) divided into 100 cents ; 
 ' In the British : 
 
 ' 10 francs (gold florin, one metrical pound, 
 or one-tenth of a metrical pound), divided 
 into 100 pence ; with the addition, if desired, 
 of 100 francs (one metrical pound, £4 ster- 
 ling), divided into 1,000 pence. 
 
 ' Such a coin as the gold 8s. piece could be pro- 
 duced without expense, owing to the seigniorage of 
 f d. which it would yield as a token, and the piece 
 could be made sufficiently distinctive by giving it a 
 plain edge. For the issue of such a piece there is 
 the precedent of the silver florin, which was devised 
 to represent the pound and mil system, and to bring 
 that system under the notice of the public. The 8s. 
 piece proposed would represent the metrical system 
 founded upon the penny, which has always been a 
 rival with the former in general estimation, and
 
 46 INTEENATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 which seems entitled to equal consideration at the 
 hands of Government. The issue of such a piece, 
 while it brought the metrical system of coinage into 
 notice, would not be conclusive as to the ultimate 
 adoption of that system, but would leave it possible 
 to advance in such a course, or to recede from it at 
 any time without embarrassment.' 
 
 As the delegates state their plan, it involves the 
 immediate issue of an 8s. gold piece, which is to 
 circulate with the present coins. But in this there 
 would be much harm and no good. It would be 
 very inconvenient to have at once in circulation 
 pieces so alike in appearance, but so sensibly differ- 
 ent in value, as an 8s. gold piece and a 10s. gold 
 piece ; the cashiers of all banks would rebel against 
 the puzzle, and in practice it would cause constant 
 mistakes. The half-sovereign we must have, and 
 so the 8s. piece would be unpopular as an introduc- 
 tion of the proposed coin — it would be a bad intro- 
 duction. The 8s. piece would begin by creating 
 blunders and causing plague ; it would be itself 
 unpopular, and make everything allied to it un- 
 popular too. 
 
 But though the immediate issue of a 10-franc 
 piece in England is out of the question, its adoption 
 as a basis for a universal money is by no means out
 
 THE PRACTICAL PROPOSALS. 47 
 
 of the question. There is, indeed, one objection of 
 great magnitude to it — of the greatest magnitude 
 to English ideas — the 10-franc piece is a very low 
 unit. The tendency of nations is to augment the 
 scale of their transactions, and the larger the trans- 
 action the more convenient to have a high unit in 
 terms of which to express it. The natural change 
 is from a lower unit to a higher, and it is a going- 
 back in civilization to begin to count in 8s. pieces 
 when we have been used to count in pounds sterling. 
 The number of figures would be greater, and the 
 reckoning would be more difficult. To this it is 
 replied — first, that the reckoning would be in deci- 
 mals, which for all paper calculations is indisputably 
 easier, so that the increased facility by the improve- 
 ment in the mode of calculation may be set off 
 against the augmented difficulty from the degrada- 
 tion of the unit ; secondly, that for very large cal- 
 culations the new method may easily be made better 
 than the old. As civilization augments and com- 
 merce extends, the sovereign may become an incon- 
 veniently small unit ; indeed, even now the use of 
 it often involves an inconvenient number of figures. 
 But 100 francs or £4 might in the new system easily 
 serve as a ' large-business unit,' and as a monetary 
 statistical unit. It would perhaps be better than
 
 48 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 the sovereign for the last purpose, and as good as 
 the sovereign for the first purpose. 
 
 In other respects the proposal to issue a 10-franc 
 unit is faultless. It at once affords a basis for a 
 universal money of account ; prices could be every- 
 where quoted in it, just as they are now quoted in 
 it throughout France and throughout the countries 
 of the Convention. It thoroughly accomplishes the 
 end, if we can but make up our mind to the means. 
 
 There still remains a proposal suggested to the 
 Commissioners— that the 25-franc piece might be 
 adopted in this country as a monetary unit, upon 
 condition that France and other countries adopted 
 it as a monetary unit too ; that we should decimalise 
 upon that basis, if they would change their unit 
 and decimalise upon it too. But the merits and 
 demerits of this scheme must be discussed in an- 
 other article.
 
 49 
 
 V. 
 
 THE EESULT OF THE DISCUSSION. 
 
 The proposal to establish a new unit of account of 
 25 francs has some plausibility at first sight. There 
 is a coin very near to it in all the most important 
 countries. The Spanish doblon, the American half- 
 eagle, the English sovereign are all very near to it. 
 A decimal system of money and accounts based on 
 this piece would be approximately intelligible wher- 
 ever it is necessary. But here the merit of the 
 scheme stops. Though, like many non-French coins, 
 it is identical with no coin ; in Spain, in England, 
 and in America, there would be a slight change to 
 be made, and in this matter the difficulty of making 
 a change is not to be estimated by its arithmetical 
 magnitude. A small change may cause more diffi- 
 culty than a great change. Even in France there 
 is as yet no such coin in circulation ; it has been 
 proposed there, as a concession to foreign wishes, 
 and especially to supposed English wishes, but it
 
 50 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 is not desired or thought of by the mass of the 
 French. Its adoption as a unit will entail a change 
 of every coin in the world, and of every money 
 of account in the world, and there is, therefore, 
 no chance of its being chosen. It would be a con- 
 trivance to combine as many difficulties as possible, 
 and to puzzle as many people as possible. 
 
 A suggestion may, however, be founded on it. 
 The great difficulty in all changes of coin is with 
 the smaller coins. This is the difficulty which has 
 prevented, and is long likely to prevent, a decimali- 
 sation of a coinage founded on the £. Twenty years 
 ago and more the florin was struck as a first step 
 to that scheme, and to prepare men's minds. But 
 we are not a bit nearer that scheme than we then 
 were. Mr. Gladstone told a deputation that he was 
 by no means certain ' we could get rid of the penny,' 
 and there the plan stuck. The mass of the com- 
 munity could not be persuaded to change the petty 
 coins they use and reckon in ; and so many tolls and 
 charges — some belonging to private people — are 
 assessed in the smaller coins, that we should be im- 
 mersed in a complexity of compensations. No doubt 
 it could be done, and for a great object ought to be 
 done, but there would be endless difficulty in per- 
 suading the people to do it. On the contrary, if
 
 THE RESULT OF THE DISCUSSION. 51 
 
 you retain the smaller coins all other changes are 
 in comparison easy ; you do not require to change 
 the habits of the mass of mankind; you address 
 yourself to the users of valuable coins, who are in 
 some degree educated; you can translate exactly 
 each old sum, however small, into the coinage you 
 propose; everybody could pay exactly what they 
 had contracted to pay ; no man's income would be 
 menaced, and no one's diminished. Now, a system 
 can certainly be devised which would keep the 
 English small money, and also the American small 
 money. The plan of decimal coinage known as the 
 ' farthing plan ' does this. We should have to 
 change the sovereign to 1,000 farthings, or 
 £1 0s. lOd. ; now, this is almost exactly the half- 
 eagle of five dollars. Taking the dollar at 4s. 2d., 
 which by Act of Congress it is, the American cent 
 is equal to an English halfpenny, and the cent 
 therefore could be retained in the United States as 
 a paying coin just as the halfpenny could be kept 
 here. It would, therefore, be not only possible, it 
 would for such a matter be even easy, to found a 
 great Anglo-Saxon system of coins — a system of 
 coins which would be common to both the great 
 nations which speak the English language. And 
 the two countries would not only obtain the advan- 
 
 E 2
 
 52 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 tage of uniformity — each of them would have a better 
 coinage than it now has. America would have a 
 high gold unit, and would reckon her vast debt and 
 great taxation in units of suitable size; counting 
 such large sums by dollars seems, and always must 
 seem, like measuring their enormous territory by 
 inches. England would have a decimal coinage 
 and a decimal system of accounts, which now she 
 has not, and which, as long as we keep the sovereign 
 as our principal unit, she is not at all likely to 
 have. 
 
 No doubt it would be long before the French and 
 the other nations which have adopted their money 
 would change, and adopt the Anglo-Saxon money. 
 But still the mercantile transactions of the English- 
 speaking race are so much greater than those of any 
 other race ; a price current that an Anglo-Saxon can 
 effectually deal with is a price current so much more 
 important and so much more read than a price cur- 
 rent which only the French and the copiers of French 
 money can readily use — that in the course of years 
 it is very likely that the Anglo-Saxon money would 
 become the one money. And even before then it 
 might be and would be largely used as the principal 
 money of wholesale account. Every great firm in 
 the world would quote prices in that great spread-
 
 THE KESULT OF THE DISCUSSION. 53 
 
 ing and so to say oceanic money, as well as in its 
 own local money. 
 
 Besides it must not be forgotten that Germany 
 will have a currency to choose ; none of her many 
 currencies are suitable to modern commerce ; and 
 she ought to have and will have, we may be sure, ere 
 long one uniform coinage and one single money of 
 account. It is very likely, considering her great 
 intercourse with America and England, that she 
 might choose to select the money which we put for- 
 ward rather than that which France puts forward. 
 In that case, there would be one Teutonic money 
 and one Latin money ; the latter mostly confined 
 to the West of Europe, and the former circulating 
 through the world. Such a monetary state would 
 be an immense improvement on the present. Yearly 
 one nation after another would drop into the union 
 which best suited it ; and looking to the commercial 
 activity of the Teutonic races, and the comparative 
 torpor of the Latin races, no doubt the Teutonic 
 money would be most frequently preferred. 1 In this 
 case, as in most, the stronger would daily come to 
 be stronger, and the weaker daily be in comparison 
 if not absolutely weaker. Probably in the end the 
 
 1 There may be less prospect of this now that Germany has 
 chosen a currency of her own ; but the scheme of our Anglo-Saxon 
 money is in no way dependent upon Germany's adhesion to it.
 
 54 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 less coinage would merge in the greater, but at any 
 rate it would be a great step to have but two moneys, 
 and we could well make shift to do with that if we 
 were sure, as we should be, that there never were 
 to be any more. 
 
 The worst objection to such a plan is the present 
 state of the American paper currency. The metallic 
 dollar of 4s. 2d. is superseded by the paper green- 
 back, worth a good third less ; men buy in paper, not 
 in gold, and sell for paper too. If the two countries 
 adjusted their metallic currencies they still would 
 not have a monetary union, because one altogether 
 rejects coin as a measure of value and the other 
 adheres to it. Still we may hope that the paper 
 depreciation of America will be temporary ; the other 
 difficulties of a monetary union will take some time 
 to settle, and in the meantime this one may settle 
 itself. 1 
 
 It is true that, even after this depreciation is 
 cured, another difficulty would remain. Though by 
 Act of Congress the dollar is valued at 4s. 2d., in 
 fact in real gold it is not so much ; but after the 
 immense alterations in the value of the dollar which 
 the Greenback system has introduced, it is not pro- 
 
 1 The resumption of specie payments has, a* Mr. Bagehot 
 anticipated, removed this objection.
 
 THE EESULT OF THE DISCUSSION. 55 
 
 bable that the Americans would object to a slight 
 change for the purpose of founding a monetary 
 union primarily with England, and gradually we 
 may hope with much, if not all, the civilised world. 
 America has the casting-vote in this matter. If 
 she should in fact (as it has been said and suggested 
 she would) join the existing monetary union, it 
 would be useless to attempt to rival the currency 
 of that union. It would then be supported by the 
 principal nations of the Latin race, and by the 
 second and the most augmenting nation of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race ; it would couple the prestige of 
 the old Continent and that of the new. But as yet 
 the people of the United States have never con- 
 sidered the ' International Coinage ' question any 
 more than the people of England. When they do, 
 it is probable that they would consider a union 
 with England of greater importance than a union 
 with the nations who have copied the French 
 coinage ; her transactions with us are now far 
 more than hers with them, and, as we have before 
 said, English-speaking business grows faster than 
 any other business. So impressed was Mr. Chase 
 with the advantage of a common money with 
 England, that he proposed to Congress to adopt 
 the English sovereign. But the change to a com-
 
 56 INTEKNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 mon union founded on the five-dollar piece must be 
 far more pleasing to American sentiment than a 
 change to the English sovereign ; and, as we have 
 seen, it is better for us, too, since any new Inter- 
 national Coinage must be decimal, and the decimal 
 system founded on the £ involves so much inter- 
 ference with 'penny business' that it probably 
 could not be carried. Besides, it ' stops the way ' 
 of all coinage improvement, not becoming itself 
 more popular, but preventing Englishmen from 
 attending to any scheme which might be popular 
 and might be carried. 
 
 We suggest this scheme in no hostility to the 
 10-franc scheme. On the contrary, we think 
 Messrs. Graham and Wilson — our Commissioners 
 at Paris — who first suggested it, made an immense 
 advance in ' one currency ' discussion. Before that 
 there was no proposal which gave us one real money, 
 one money of account. Before that the suggestions 
 went to a common coin — a 5-franc or 25-franc coin ; 
 there was no plan at all which would enable prices 
 to be quoted alike, and bargains to be expressed 
 alike. Nor is there any competing scheme now 
 which could at once give us these benefits. Its 
 advocates have a strong position : they speak on 
 behalf of a great monetary union ; they say : ' We
 
 THE RESULT OF THE DISCUSSION. 51 
 
 have made a great sacrifice ; we have abolished our 
 old currencies ; we have adopted a new currency ; 
 do you join with us, and change your currency as 
 we have ? ' It is hard to reply : 'Oh, you have 
 changed too fast ; you have chosen a currency you 
 should not have chosen ; you must change again ; 
 you must make a third currency if we are to join 
 you.' For a moment, the difficulty of inducing the 
 present race of Frenchmen and of French imitators 
 to disuse the franc is insuperable. Generations 
 must pass before they will think of it, much less 
 do it. The ' 10-franc ' advocates have, therefore, 
 the best of clients — a client who will consent to 
 ' nothing ' ; they are able by the consistent force 
 of obstinate multitudes to say : ' If you will not have 
 our union you shall have none, for we will not con- 
 sent to any other. We have just " built a new 
 house " ; you may or may not come and live in it ; 
 but we cannot pull it down again and begin a third 
 house to please you.' What the answer to this is 
 we will show in the next article.
 
 58 INTEENATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE BEAL FEASIBILITY OF ASSIMILATING 
 THE ENGLISH AND THE AMEBICAN 
 CUBBENCIES. 
 
 We have said that nothing can exceed the in- 
 genuity of the ' 10-franc ' scheme for an inter- 
 national money ; that it is more original than any 
 other scheme ; that it promises more than any other 
 scheme. But we fear that in practice there are too 
 many objections to it. A responsible Minister 
 would hardly face Parliament with it. 
 
 First. It would alter the penny, and the penny 
 is the unit of small payments. The indistinct 
 manner in which this grave objection has been 
 understood by some accomplished supporters of the 
 plan is remarkable. Thus Mr. Leone Levi, on 
 examination before the Commission, gave Lord 
 Halifax, the chairman, these answers : 
 
 '376. Do you think that such a complete re- 
 volution in the coinage as that would be well re- 
 ceived in this country ? — The penny would remain,
 
 ASSIMILATION OF CURRENCIES. 59 
 
 and we must remember that when the discussion 
 was carried on about the pound and mil scheme, a 
 very large and preponderating number of persons 
 were in favour of the maintenance of the penny above 
 the sovereign, and more especially of the tenpenny 
 scheme. The difference between the tenpenny 
 scheme formerly advocated and my proposal is, 
 that with mine you have a gold and international 
 unit as the basis, whilst formerly that plan seemed 
 to imply a silver unit, without introducing any 
 uniformity with the coins of other countries. 
 
 ' 377. Would not the penny be altered too ? — 
 Not in reality, because the present penny is really 
 worth 10 centimes. 
 
 1 378. One hundred pence are worth 8s. 4cZ. ? — 
 Yes, nominally. 
 
 '379. For that you would pay only 8s. ? — Yes. 
 
 ' 380. There is, therefore, a difference of 4 per 
 cent. ? — Yes, the 25th part of every penny. What 
 is contemplated is a unit of 100 pence ; the rela- 
 tion it would bear to the present coin would, of 
 course, be different. 
 
 ' 381. Your 10-franc piece would be 100 pence ? 
 — Yes, that is the basis. 
 
 ' 382. The 10-franc piece is equal to 8s. ? — Yes, 
 with the present penny.
 
 60 INTEKNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 ' 383. After the change ?— No ; then it will be 
 worth 100 pence. I allow that there is some diffi- 
 culty in this manner, arising from the slight 
 change in the value of the penny, but the new 
 10-franc piece for the present should be issued as 
 a token only. I consider it far easier to make that 
 change in the penny than in the sovereign, which 
 is the standard. 
 
 ' 384. I understood you to say that the penny 
 would not be changed ; would it not be changed ? — 
 Not in respect to its intrinsic value. In its relation 
 to the present coinage it would have to be. You 
 could take the same penny as exists now, and count 
 it at the rate of 100 to the 10 francs, because it is 
 not worth more. 
 
 ' 385. Of course its intrinsic value is much 
 below that ? — Yes ; that is what I mean. 
 
 ' 386. But the value for which the penny is 
 current would be reduced ? — Yes.' 
 
 The truth obviously is, that all penny incomes 
 would be taxed nearly lOd. in the £, and the owners 
 would ask for compensation, and must have com- 
 pensation. An income-tax so special and so sudden 
 would not be borne silently. The owners of bridge 
 tolls and ferries are not the main people ; the whole 
 system of railway carriage is based on penny
 
 ASSIMILATION OF CURRENCIES. 
 
 61 
 
 charges. For example, the following are passenger 
 charges : — 
 
 
 First Class. 
 
 Second Class. 
 
 Third Class 
 
 
 s. d. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 London to Birkenhead . 
 
 . 33 6 
 
 25 
 
 16 1\ 
 
 „ Birdbrook 
 
 . 14 8 
 
 10 3 
 
 13 2 
 
 „ Beechington . 
 
 . 15 
 
 10 6 
 
 5 
 
 „ Bishopstoke . 
 
 . 14 6 
 
 10 6 
 
 6 1 
 
 „ Bishopstone . 
 
 . 14 
 
 11 5 
 
 4 9 
 
 „ Bishop Stortford 
 
 . 7 8 
 
 4 6 
 
 2 8 
 
 Again, the following rates are charged on a main 
 line in Ireland, which is only an average speci- 
 
 men 
 
 Rates Charged. 
 
 1. Grain 
 
 2. Drink 
 
 3. Salt provisions 
 . I Pitwood 
 
 J Cut timber . 
 
 5. Artificial manure 
 
 6. Groceries 
 
 7. Bale goods, including wool 
 ft ( Bricks, tiles, slates, stone 
 
 J Drain pipes .... 
 
 q ( Iron castings and machinery 
 
 | Iron agricultural implements 
 
 10. Potatoes 1| 
 
 11. Coal and coke . . . id. to 1 
 
 l$d. per ton per mile. 
 
 If 
 
 If 
 
 Of 
 
 li 
 
 li 
 
 H 
 
 if 
 
 4.V 
 
 These charges are often the highest the company 
 can by law make. Any Minister who shall under- 
 take to adjust them to a currency not expressible 
 in pennies will have a hard task before him. 
 
 Secondly. A change to the French system of 
 reckoning is a change that must be made at once.
 
 62 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 There can be no transition state ; the two systems 
 of reckoning cannot be used together. Neither 
 pound, shilling, nor penny would have an exact 
 equivalent in the new coinage or the new money of 
 account. On a given day we must all take to francs, 
 and abandon shillings. 
 
 Some imagine that this interval can be bridged 
 over by the issue of an introductory coin ; it is sug- 
 gested 'that a gold coin the value of 10 francs 
 (which is of less value than 8s. by about three 
 farthings) should be struck and issued as a token 
 coin for 8s., and be made legal tender up to £4.' 
 But no one would count or reckon in such a coin ; 
 no one would cash accounts in 8s.-pieces ; no one 
 would quote prices in them ; no one think in them. 
 We have had for years the florin as an ' introductory 
 coinage ' to the ' Pound and Mil ' scheme of deci- 
 mals, but we are not nearer that scheme. No one 
 writes in ' florins,' or talks in ' florins.' They are 
 pieces of 2s. and 24d., and they are no more. The 
 8s. token would be equally neglected in thought, 
 and equally useless as an introduction. 
 
 In the present state of the education of English- 
 men the transition state is most important. In 
 better educated parts of the world — in North Ger- 
 many, for example — it is very likely that a sudden
 
 ASSIMILATION OF CUERENCIES. 
 
 63 
 
 change in the modes of reckoning could be effected, 
 but it is not so here. A great deal of counting both 
 on paper and in the head is done by very illiterate 
 people ; especially by women, who can do things 
 ' their own way ' very well, though they cannot 
 explain what that way is, and though very often it 
 is not easy to tell. Many a common tradesman 
 who now keeps or half keeps books in our present 
 money could not keep them at all if he were obliged 
 to keep them in any other money. He would get 
 ' bothered.' Pence, shillings, and sovereigns seem 
 to him indispensable, and without them he cannot 
 get on. 
 
 The change of bookkeeping would be a greater 
 difficulty, because it would be coincident with a great 
 change in prices. Almost all prices are expressed 
 in pennies or fractions of a penny. Take the fol- 
 lowing list almost at random from our usual ' price 
 current ' : — 
 
 Hides. 
 
 Ox and Cow— B. A. and Monte Video, 
 Do. and Rio Grande, salted 
 
 3ry,p 
 
 er lb 
 
 
 
 
 d. 
 5ft 
 
 s. <l. 
 
 @0 10 
 6± 
 
 Brazil, dry . 
 Drysalted 
 Drysalted Mauritius . 
 Rio, dry Rio Grande . 
 West Coast hides 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 5 
 
 H 
 
 7 
 7 
 
 9| 
 7* 
 l\ 
 10 
 
 
 Cape, salted . 
 Australian . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 3^ 
 
 6J 
 5 h
 
 64 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 Hides — continued. 
 
 s. d. s. d. 
 
 New York 3f@0 4£ 
 
 East India 06 11 
 
 Kips, Russia 8 10J 
 
 South American horse . . . per hide 6 6 12 
 
 Indigo. 
 
 Bengal 11 9 11 
 
 Oude 3681 
 
 Madras 1071 
 
 Kurpah 34 88 
 
 Manilla 4680 
 
 These prices must be all changed, and most 
 others too at the same moment. One would be 
 changed to the advantage of the seller, another to 
 his disadvantage. And just then the retail sellers 
 of the country would be required to adopt a new 
 mode of account-keeping. It would not be easy to 
 many to know if they were gaining or losing, even 
 if they reckoned in the old mode, and they would 
 be quite at sea if they had to reckon in a new mode. 
 The anxious country shopkeepers would be frantic, 
 and the careless would be insolvent. 
 
 These are objections from ' below,' as it were — 
 from the world of small transactions. But there 
 would be also great objection to the ' 10-franc ' plan 
 from ' above ' — from the world of great transactions. 
 It would be said : ' For our purposes the movement 
 is a retrograde movement. We have a unit, the
 
 ASSIMILATION OF CURRENCIES. 65 
 
 sovereign, well suited to large business, and you 
 wish us to go back and take less than half that 
 unit. We now reckon in 20s. -pieces, you want us 
 to reckon in 8s. -pieces.' 
 
 For these reasons we fear we must reject the 
 10-franc plan. No scheme can be more ingenious ; 
 none more interesting. Every one who has dwelt 
 on the subject must have a partiality for it. But 
 we do not know how to face its practical difficulties ; 
 with our present education and our present trading 
 habits, we think they are invincible. 
 
 But none of these objections apply to the plan 
 for a single currency which we might at once use, 
 and the United States might at once use, and which 
 Germany might soon join. That plan is to make 
 the £ a thousand farthings, instead of 960, and its 
 scale would run thus in our present money : — 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 Unit 1 10 
 
 * 2 1 
 
 ifc 2i 
 
 T<foo 0i 
 
 Every sum in the old currency would be exactly 
 representable in the new. There would be no diffi- 
 culty in penny bridge or ferry tolls. The penny 
 might continue to subsist as a coin, though it 
 would not be a part of the decimal scale, just as 
 
 F
 
 66 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 the sou exists in France, and is the hasis of count- 
 less dealings, though it is neither the tenth nor the 
 hundredth of a franc. It could at once be written 
 in the new money of account, just as the sou can 
 be at once written in the present French money. 
 All common dealings, all common quotations of 
 prices, could go on just as well in pennies after the 
 change as before ; in prices there need be no 
 change whatever ; the new and the old would be 
 exactly equivalent ; they might be written diffe- 
 rently on paper, but they would be the same 
 number of pence and farthings. 
 
 What coins should be issued under the new 
 system, and which of our present silver coins called 
 in, would be a matter for very careful reflection; 
 but whatever coins were selected, accounts might 
 be kept for an indefinite time as now. If there 
 were a piece of 2s. Id., for example, those who 
 chose might deal with it as they now deal with the 
 present half-crown ; they might write it as 2s. Id. 
 in their accounts, with £ s. d. as at present. The 
 main difference would be that they would write the 
 new principal coin, the universal, as we might call 
 it, £1 Os. lOd. Anyone could learn it in a day, 
 however ignorant and however stupid. 
 
 Again, no matter which of our coins were kept,
 
 Erratum 
 Page 67 line 9, for after read befitrt
 
 ASSIMILATION OF CURRENCIES. G7 
 
 it could be written at once in the new coinage. 
 They are all multiples of the farthing, and what- 
 ever is a multiple of the farthing can at once go 
 down on paper in the new currency. 
 
 The rules of reduction between the old and new 
 systems of account would be the simplest possible. 
 To turn the old currency into the new, the rule 
 would be — ' Convert the sum given into farthings, 
 put the decimal point after the third place from 
 the right, and the result is the sum in the new 
 currency ' — thus, £185 9s. 4%d. 
 
 £ 
 
 185 
 20 
 
 s. d. 
 9 4f 
 
 3-709 
 12 
 
 
 44-512 
 4 
 
 
 178-051 
 
 one figure less to write than our present currency. 
 To change the new currency into the old the rule 
 would be — ' Treat the entire sum as farthings, and 
 divide by 4, 12, and 20, as usual.' To change 
 97*311 of new currency, we should only proceed — 
 
 4 ) 97-311 
 
 12 ) 24327 £ 
 
 20 ) 2027 3 
 
 £101 7 U
 
 68 INTEKNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 again, more figures to write than the new cur- 
 rency. 
 
 The new unit is so near the value of the old 
 sovereign that it is impossible to say whether it is 
 better or worse as a unit ; and the trouble of 
 adding lOd. to every pound in old accounts is not 
 very arduous, besides that it would be facilitated 
 by handy tables. 
 
 The Americans would have just the same facili- 
 ties at the change, subject to the minute change to 
 bring the value of the dollar to the Congress value 
 of 4s. 2d. All their coins — their half-eagle, their 
 dollar, their cent — would be exactly expressible in 
 the new coinage. Their half-eagle — their 5-dollar 
 — would be the unit. They could keep their books 
 as now, and they could reckon as now, if they liked, 
 and they could change at once, and on the instant 
 adopt the new plan if they thought that more plea- 
 sant. Each American could judge for himself. 
 
 The real objection is that after all this plan 
 does not combine ; it leaves us with two moneys ; 
 but if all the nations of the world gradually joined 
 either the Latin coinage league or the Teutonic 
 coinage league, trade would be very easy ; and the 
 amalgamation of these two might be left to a future 
 and more educated age.
 
 69 
 
 NOTE ON SEIGNORAGE. 
 
 I still think the ingenious scheme proposed by 
 Colonel Smith far too difficult of comprehension to 
 be adopted by Parliament, or explained to the 
 country, but I am bound to say that I recant a 
 refined objection which I before made to it. In the 
 Economist I remarked : — ' It is evident, as Sir John 
 Lubbock well put it, that the new sovereign could 
 not be equal in value both to the existing pound 
 sterling and to 25 francs of the present French 
 currency ; if by the imposition of a mintage it is 
 made equal to the former no advantage will be 
 effected, while if it is reduced to the latter, the 
 necessity for compensation will arise.' 
 
 But Colonel Smith does not propose that the 
 new sovereign should be exactly 25 francs of present 
 French currency. He proposes that it should be 
 identical with 25 francs of a new French currency, 
 which is to circulate through all the countries join-
 
 70 INTERNATIONAL COINAGE. 
 
 ing the Monetary Union, and be identical in all 
 those countries. When it is objected that the 
 French will not wish to change their currency, he 
 answers that the change will be microscopic. The 
 French now charge a very considerable seignorage 
 in one way or another, and the plan is, that they 
 should charge a minute fraction more in a pre- 
 scribed way. 
 
 It is often argued that, as there are 113 grains 
 of gold in the present sovereign, and only 112 
 grains in twenty-five present francs, therefore their 
 ' value ' differs by yfg- of a sovereign ; and this is 
 quite true, if the two are exported to a distant 
 country, say Japan. There French or English 
 coins pass only in proportion to the bullion con- 
 tained in them. But while an English coin remains 
 in England it passes not as so much bullion, but 
 as so much bullion plus so much Government 
 charge. A charge for making sovereigns is just 
 like a charge for making gold plate. If goldsmiths 
 chose to make plate for nothing, plate would be 
 cheaper ; in a little while goldsmiths would be 
 ruined, but, as long as they stood, they could give 
 the public a cheap article. A government is just 
 the same, only it is never ruined, because it makes 
 the taxpayer pay more. Accordingly, a coin may
 
 NOTE ON SEIGNOEAGE 71 
 
 continue for ever to buy no more than the bullion 
 contained in it would buy. The government being 
 a subsidised producer may work at a loss or for 
 nothing. Such is the case of the English Govern- 
 ment now, which charges nothing. 
 
 But, on the other hand, if, like the present 
 French Government, it choose to charge a seignor- 
 age, this will operate in France like the goldsmiths' 
 charge for making plate — it will raise the price of 
 the article in France. Accordingly, the present 
 sovereign and the present 25 francs do not differ 
 in buying poiver by near T ^- F of a sovereign. The 
 sovereign purchases a certain quantity of various 
 articles, because it has so much bullion ; 25 francs 
 buy nearly as much, though they have less bullion, 
 because the coining of them costs something too. 
 
 But all this discussion is too fine for the mass 
 of men. If the Commissioners could not follow it, 
 how will the House of Commons follow it ? 
 
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