1. English Money

In all times money has been the weight of a certain amount of copper, silver or gold, in the form of coins the fineness of which is guaranteed by the stamp of the State. The weight of coins used in payments may change in course of time, but the nominal unit of weights often continues, the pound, or livre, or marc, &c. Thus, the original Roman unit, the As, or mint-pound of copper or bronze, reduced gradually to 1/24 of its primitive weight, persisted as a money of account long after it had been replaced in the currency by the silver Denarius. This was originally coined at a time when it represented the value of 10 As; hence its name deni-aris, ten of copper.

The French livre, or livre d’estelins, reduced gradually to a coin about 1/74 of a 12-oz. livre, retains its name as a synonym of the franc.

The English pound of silver, once a Tower pound = 5400 grains, reduced long ago to 1745 grains, in 20 shillings, persists as a money of account, though the silver is superseded in payments over 40 shillings by a gold coin weighing 123-1/4 grains. Prices over 40s. are still often stated in shillings.

The Roman denarius originally weighed 60 grains, afterwards reduced to 52-1/2 grains. A golden denarius was also coined, which afterwards became the Arabic dinar.

Under Charlemagne the mint weight of France was heavier than the marc of Troyes afterwards adopted as a standard. Adapting the Roman system to the customs of his Teutonic subjects the emperor Karl divided the pound of silver into 20 silver solidi or sols, each equal to 12 silver penings or pennies of about 25 grains which, assimilated to the Roman denarii, were called deniers, also estelins or sterlings. The solidus appears to have corresponded to a Teutonic monetary unit, the shilling, equal to a variable number of penings, which coins were not of uniform value until about Charlemagne’s time.

The Carlovingian systems of coinage had passed to England long before the Norman Conquest, displacing the old Norse and Saxon systems—the Norse, in which the Ore was of 20 silver penings = 1/8 marc or 1/12 lb., and the Saxon Sceatta of 40 Styca, usually equivalent to pence. The shilling, = 1/20 pound of silver pence, became established—‘xxx scyllinge penega,’ thirty shillings of pence (‘Saxon Chronicle,’ 775). The Norman Conquest made no appreciable change in the English customary coinage. The Tower pound of silver which the Normans found established was coined into 240 of the ‘English peny called a sterling,’ each weighing 22-1/2 grains instead of the 25 grains of Charlemagne’s sterlings. Twelve pence made a shilling of 20 to the pound, and twenty pence or pennyweights made an ounce of 12 to the mint-pound.

England soon followed France, but much more slowly, in the usual dwindling of the weight of coins, as the king, pushed for money, ordered his moneyers to melt down the silver pennies and recoin them of lower weight. They remained at 22-1/2 grains down to the time of Edward I. Edward III’s first pennies were of 22-1/4 grains, but in the 18th year of his reign they weighed 20-1/4 grains, in the 20th year 20 grains, and after the 27th year he made the pound of silver yield 300 pennies at 18 grains. He also coined groats (great sterlings or grosses). Silver halfpence (mayles) and farthings (ferlynges) were coined, and a statute specially ordered that no sterling halfpenny nor farthing be molten ‘for to make vessel or any other thing by goldsmiths nor others.’

At this time, if we may believe the Statute of Labourers, one penny was the usual daily pay of the farm-labourer, but mowers were to have fivepence by the acre or the day. Prices of farm-produce were fixed. A penny would buy a chicken or six pounds of bread, 2 pence a fowl, 4 pence a goose.

The diminution in the weight of the penny was slow and did not affect wholesale dealings in which payment was usually made by weight.^[35]

In all but retail transactions payment might be agreed to be by weight. In Stephen’s reign the land-revenue of countries was farmed out. The sheriff or ‘fermour’ of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire paid into the treasury £454 10s. by weight (ad pensum) and £262 4s. by tale (numero). He probably picked out the full-weight coins for payment by tale, and had to take (as perhaps he received) weight-value for the rest.

Under Henry IV the sterling had fallen to 15 grains; under Edward IV it fell to 12 grains, at which weight it stood till Henry VIII brought it down to 10-1/2 grains, and also debased it to only one-third its weight of silver. His father had coined shillings, hitherto only a money of account; his own mint continued this coinage, but got 48 of them, instead of 20, from the Troy pound of silver, and subsequently by debasement nearly 150.

In Edward VI’s reign the Protector Somerset continued this system, but, at his fall, efforts were made by the Council to restore honesty to the coinage, at least as regards the shillings and crowns. The pennies remained debased until the wisdom of Elizabeth restored the standard, and since that time our silver coinage has remained of true standard and at the weight of 7-1/2 grains for each penny value, or one-third of its weight at the time of the Norman Conquest. The Scots silver coinage fell much lower than that of England; by the time of the Union it had fallen to 1/36, the pound Scots being worth 20 pence English, instead of 20 shillings.

It is curious that the kings, so ready to make a profit by lowering the silver coins, appear to have disdained the evident profit of a copper coinage. Penalties were repeatedly threatened by statute against the copper coins which necessity of ‘change’ caused to be made or imported. These were unlawful coins called galyhalpens, saskyns, dodekyns and dotkins (probably Scottish ‘doits’). James I granted a patent for the making of copper farthings. Halfpennies were first coined in Charles II’s time, but it was not till near the end of George III’s reign that a copper penny was struck, probably because the tradition of the silver penny weighing 32 wheat-corns, albeit shrunken, was against the penny being other than silver.

The penny was at first a full ounce of copper. Twopenny pieces were also struck weighing two ounces.

The present bronze coinage was made in 1860 after the example of the bronze coinage of Napoleon III, the reformer of the French currency; it was he who established a gold standard in France, hitherto a ‘silver country.’

A bronze penny not much worn weighs 1/3 oz., the halfpenny 1/5 oz. The latter is one inch in diameter. The silver penny of early Plantagenet times was the size of the present sixpence but thinner, so that, at the full weight of 22-1/2 grains, it was slightly heavier than our threepenny piece = 21·8 grains. It bore the effigy of the king with ‘Henricus Rex’ or suchlike inscription; on the reverse was a cross, with pellets or other ornaments in the intervals, and the name of the moneyer and city, as ‘Edmund on Lin(coln).’ The cross gave rise to the idea that it indicated where the penny could be broken or cut into halfpence or farthings. Doubtless it was so cut where change was scarce; and the first silver farthing was coined by Edward I, 1279, to prevent this cutting up of the pence, but equally with a cross.

At present silver pence and twopences are only coined for Maundy money.

The groat of four pence, grossus sterlingus, first coined about 1279, discontinued from the time of Elizabeth, who first coined sixpences and threepences, was revived in 1836 at the instance, or insistence, of Joseph Hume, an M.P. who, it is said, found it convenient for the exact payment of an 8d. London cab fare not exceeding a mile in the days when copper pennies weighing an ounce were inconvenient to carry in the pocket. He died in 1855, and in 1856 the Joey was discontinued.

The threepenny piece was revived in 1845.

The florin was first issued in 1849, an ill-advised attempt at decimalising the pound; it bore the inscription ‘one tenth of a pound,’ but it has utterly failed to take the place of the convenient half-crown, an important unit in the binary division of the pound. Public convenience appreciates the gold sovereign and half-sovereign, the silver half-crown, shilling, sixpence and threepence. The florin is a disturbing coin offering no advantage over two separate shillings; and the double florin is worse.

No one wants the pound decimalised except a few decimal unpractical persons. A properly taught schoolboy adds up sums of money duodecimally for the pence, decimally for the shillings, converting these by twenties into pounds. It is quite easy to add up a column of pence thus: 8 and 5, 1s. 3d.; and 10, 2s. 1d.; and 8, 2s. 9d.; and 5, 3s. 2d. With the shillings column the units are put down and the tens carried to the column of tens; an odd 1 is put down and half the remainder carried to the column of pounds.

English silver coins are 37/40 = 0·925 fine, i.e. 11 oz. 2 dwt. of the now obsolete 12 oz. mint-pound.

French five-franc pieces are at 0·900, other silver coins are 0·835 fine.

Gold Coins

Of the two precious metals, only one can be the standard of value. In a gold-standard country, as England has been since 1816, the golden sovereign of lawful weight is the standard of value. As the price of silver, like that of every other commodity, varies with demand and supply, it would be futile to attempt to make silver coins correspond in actual metal value to gold coins; especially as, since the great fall in the price of silver from its demonetisation in many countries and its large production, silver coins are really tokens; tokens of value, but still tokens, not legal tender above a certain amount. A shilling melted down is only worth fivepence or less; while sovereigns melted down can be exchanged, at a trifling charge, for their weight in minted gold.

In silver-standard countries it is gold which varies in price. Thus in India, where for centuries the standard of value has been the silver rupee now weighing 180 grains and worth fifty years ago a little over two shillings, gold coins of the same weight called ‘mohurs’ were current at market price, about 16 rupees more or less. Sovereigns were worth about 10 rupees in 1860; they would exchange now for double that price did not the Government of India, by restricting silver coinage and other legitimate devices, keep the gold price of the rupee at about 1s. 4d., so that 15 rupees will buy a sovereign for transactions with England and other gold-standard countries.

Gold was coined in ancient Rome. The gold solidus or aureus of Constantine was 1/72 of an As or mint-pound; so that it weighed 70·14 grains. It was called ‘solidus,’ entire, as distinguished from the semissis and tremissis, its half and third. The original French sol, or shilling, was an ‘entire’ of 12 deniers; hence the £ s. d. we use were once the current signs, in France and elsewhere, for librÆ, solidi, denarii.

There were some gold coins of the early Saxon kings. Under the early Norman kings foreign gold coins were current, but the first regular gold coinage was that of Edward III; his Noble of fine gold, 1/50 of a Tower pound, weighed 108 grains, the weight of two golden florins of Florence or of two ducats or zechins of Venice. He afterwards coined nobles at the rate of 42 to the mint-pound; these weighed 119 grains, and, as they were of 23-7/8 carats fine, contained almost exactly the same weight of pure gold as the modern sovereign of 123-1/4 grains. Their value was about half a marc or 80 sterlings of full weight, and as the proper weight of silver in English coins was then three times that at present, the 6s. 8d. equivalence of the noble then is that of the sovereign now.

The weight of gold coins mattered little in practice; they were always weighed, and represented an amount of sterling varying according to the state of the money-market and to the condition of the silver coinage.

Edward IV’s noble was called a Rial; and the Angel, 2/3 of its weight or about 80 grains, was also coined. Henry VII coined a double Rial of half a Troy ounce. Under Henry VIII this was called a Sovereign.

The fineness of gold coins, originally of 23 carats 3-1/2 grains = 994·7 gold in 1000, was reduced to 22 carats under Henry VIII and, after some variations, this standard = 916·6 gold in 1000 was finally adopted.^[36]

Sovereigns or Unites were coined under James I at 172 grains, under Charles I at 141 grains. Their value in silver varied of course according to market-rates for gold. Coined under Charles II at 130 grains they were henceforth called Guineas, varying in value from 30 to 20 shillings. Repeated attempts to fix their value by law utterly failed. In the eighteenth century it was generally above the 21s. standard at which the guinea is still reckoned as a polite coin. In 1816, on the adoption of a gold standard, the name of Sovereign was revived for the coin which is its basis.

The sovereign weighs 123·274 grains, of which 113·006 are pure gold. It is light if it weighs less than 122-1/2 grains, that is if it has lost more than 1-1/2d. in value. Its life of current weight is about 20 years in ordinary circumstances of circulation.

The mint value of gold is £3 17s. 10-1/2d. an ounce Troy; that is 2·1212 pence a grain pure, or 1·7676 penny at the standard fineness of 22 carats = 916·6 in 1000.

France adopted a gold standard in 1855; other countries followed.

The United States adopted it in 1900.

The sovereign is coined at full value without ‘seigniorage.’ In France and other gold-standard countries a charge is made for coining. In France this charge is 6 fr. 70 c. on the kilo of standard gold, 0·900 fine, value 3100 francs; this is equal to 0·216 per cent., so that 20-franc pieces lose 4·4 centimes or nearly a halfpenny each on being melted, besides assay charges.

The history of mint-weight will be further told in Chapter XX, section ‘The Carat and the Grain.’

2. Guernsey Currency

In this curious relic of the old French monetary system the Livre is the equivalent of the louis d’or of 24 francs; the Sol or sou is a shilling, 1/20 of the livre; the Denier is a penny, 1/12 of the shilling, and it is divided into 8 doubles, each equal to the old French liard or quarter-sou of 3 deniers, not to the old French double of 2 deniers. The only Guernsey coins are the bronze pieces of 8, 4, 2, 1 doubles; that of 8 doubles being the penny.

The silver coins are French, counted 10 pence to the franc; so that the five-franc piece passes for 4s. 2d. Guernsey.

The Guernsey pound is either a bank-note for this amount, or 24 francs in French silver, equal to 240 Guernsey pence. Sovereigns are current, taken at the usual rate of 25 francs and 2 pence = 252 pence or 21 shillings Guernsey. So the English sovereign becomes a guinea in French silver and Guernsey bronze.

The people of Guernsey hold by their old system; they find no inconvenience in it; and it is decidedly advantageous to the English resident in the island.

3. Indian Money

The East India Company made little change in the monetary system of the Mogul Empire. In the greater part of India the silver rupee was the standard of value, and the E.I.C. struck Sicca rupees (sikkah, coined) in the name of Shah Alam, the Great Mogul reigning at the end of the eighteenth century. These weighed 192 grains, but they were superseded in 1836 by the present standard of rupee, 180 grains, of which 165 fine, bearing the English sovereign’s head. The rupee is divided for account into 16 annas, each of 12 copper pies, though the coin so called bore until recently the Persian inscription salas pai, one-third of a pie; the real pie, inscribed ek pai, one pie, being the quarter-anna.

There are silver coins of a half, quarter and eighth of a rupee, but no anna coin. The copper or bronze coins are half, quarter and twelfth annas.

The monetary system of the Madras Presidency (the people of which are a different race, speaking Dravidian languages, not the Indo-European languages of which Hindustani is the lingua franca) was different from that of the rest of India. It was a gold-standard country, the monetary unit being the ‘Varahan’ or ‘pagoda,’ a small thick gold coin of 53 grains, reckoned as equivalent to 3-1/2 rupees or nearly 8 shillings. There were also gold Fanams of about 6 grains, and still smaller gold coins, used principally for largesse at festivities.

The Star-pagoda, the usual gold currency, was of button-shape, with a star on the convex surface, a Hindu deity on the flat. It weighed 52-1/2 grains, the same weight as the Roman denarius, the Arabic dinar, and the Venetian zechin, but it was only 19-1/2 carats fine. The E.I.C. coined pagodas of lesser weight, about 46 grains, but of English standard fineness. They also coined silver fanams, 42 being nominally equivalent to the pagoda. These weighed 15 grains, so that they were equivalent to 1/12 of the 180-grain rupee, to 1-1/3 anna, or to 4 copper pysa. So there was in the Madras Presidency a double monetary series, based on the gold pagoda and on the silver rupee, the relative value of these coins being of course inconstant. Gradually during the nineteenth century the gold standard was replaced by silver, the change taking the following order:

1. The Pagoda of 42 fanams of 8 pysa of 4 kÁsh.

The Rupee of 12 fanams.

2. Then the two-anna piece replaced the fanam, taking its name.

The Rupee of 8 fanams, of 6 pysa, of 4 kÁsh.

3. The Rupee of 16 annas, of 3 pysa, of 4 kÁsh.

4. The Rupee of 16 annas of 4 quarter-annas (called 3/4 pysa by the natives) or of 12 kÁsh improperly called ‘pies.’

The division of the rupee into 8 fanams of 24 kÁsh survives, or did survive till quite recent years, in the French settlements of Pondichery, &c. The reason alleged was that the anna is non-existent as a coin. But it is curious that the French administration did not discover that there was a decimal system connected with the rupee. For in Southern India thirty years ago, and perhaps at the present day, the pysa was = 1/3 anna and the half-pysa 1/6 anna, but these were always reckoned among the people as 1/50 and 1/100 rupee.^[37] To the people of the South the rupee is divided into 5 fanams each of 10 pysa each of 3 kÁsh. But the term kÁsh (kÁssu) is merely a name for the lowest coin. The E.I.C.’s pysa of 1808 bears the Persian inscription Bis kÁs chhar fleus ast (It is 20 kÁsh, 4 filus), followed by ‘XX cash.’ So this coin, so dear to the people of Southern India that they cannot look on the modern quarter-anna (the Anglo-Indians’ ‘pice’) otherwise than as a mookal, a 3/4 pysa, is really 20 kÁsh, and the rupee is 200 filus or 1000 kÁsh. Here is a decimal division ready for the rupee, for the half-pysa, nominally 1/96 rupee (in 1797 coins it is so inscribed ‘96 to one rupee’), but 1/100 rupee in the bazaar, is similarly inscribed as of ‘10 kÁsh 2 filus.’ So the rupee could easily be made of 10 fanams, 100 lesser pysa, 1000 kÁsh. But the sexdecimal division into annas, and the duodecimal division into pies, are too convenient to be given up for a decimal system.

The 2 filus of the half-pysa show that the pysa was once divided into 4 of a small coin (the present pie), the fils, an Arabic word probably representing the L. follis.^[38]

Indian Gold Coinage

Northern and Central India, the parts more immediately under the Mogul empire, were silver-standard countries. The silver rupee (sicca, = 192 grains) was the standard; and the golden rupee of the same weight, called an AshrÁfi, or gold mohur, was valued at 16 rupees, though generally more, according to the market-value of gold. The E.I.C. continued to strike gold mohurs, with halves, thirds and quarters. Other gold coins were current, notably the Venetian zechin, and the approximate correspondence of this coin to the quarter-mohur caused the latter to be commonly known as a ‘chick.’^[39]

Southern India offers the curious instance of a gold-standard country (a century ago) having changed to a silver standard. The pagoda has disappeared in currency. The beautiful Faruki pagoda of Tippoo is still to be found; and the Venetian zechin with its archaic design, never changed since it was first struck in the thirteenth century, is highly esteemed in the household treasuries of affluent Indians for its great purity. The word zechin or sequin is derived from sikkah, ‘coin.’ The usual Persian inscription on the Mogul coinage, continued by the E.I.C., is Shah Alam, bÁdshah ghÁzi, sikkah mubÁrak (Shah Alam, king victorious, coin auspicious).^[40]

4. Decimal Currency

It is scarcely necessary to describe the decimal systems of which the Dollar currency is the type. They have some advantages in numeration with the counterbalancing defects of all decimal series. Division of the dollar stops at a quarter; then there is a drop to 10 cents, and that coin has no quarter. Any thirding can only be approximate.