Anthon.l -^"^ [July 21, 



Coins of Americii, and the Laws governing their Issue," and proves him- 

 self, on ever}^ page of it, to be a diligent and conscientious hiborer, thinks 

 himself called on to adopt an apologetic tone when mentioning this piece, 

 and to speak of it as " not strictly included in our original plan. " Yet his 

 purpose, or "original plan" was, in his own language, "to give all the 

 trustworthy information at" his "command, relative to such coins, or to 

 kens, which were intended to serve as coins, that were either struck in 

 those parts of America which now constitute the United States, or were 

 intended for use therein;" and it cannot be controverted that this is the 

 earliest official coin of a region embracing at least half of the States which 

 now constitute the Union. We are not perhaps, in general, sufficiently 

 alive to the truth that, from the Atlantic to the remote West, the begin- 

 nings of colonization were chiefly made by France. Not Canada and 

 Louisiana, merely, formed the French America of a once far from improb- 

 able future. In an authority easy to consult, Bancroft's History of the 

 United States, Vol. II., we find a "Map of French, English, Dutch, Swe- 

 dish and Spanish possessions, or claims in the United States, in 1655." 

 A narrow strip from the Kennebec to Cape Fear, is all that is marked as 

 not French, to the northward of Florida. A large part of Maine, all West 

 Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, the greater part of New York and of 

 Pennsylvania, and from these all westward, as far as exploration had then 

 extended, are French. Every one of the States comprehended within the 

 area thus roughly denoted, may regard the coin in question as its earliest 

 monetary relic. 



Without, however, going back to years anterior to its date, or looking 

 away from the broad double valley, which extends between the AUeghanies 

 and the Rocky Mountains, or including States of which any portion lies 

 outside of these limits, wc can easily, we think, form a list of fifteen, in 

 each of which the collector, present and to come, must regard this 

 "Gloriam Regui" of 1G70, as its most' ancient numismatic monument. 

 The reader of history is aware that "Louisiana" was, in 1712, defined by 

 authority as comprising all the country drained by waters emptying 

 directly or indirectly into the Mississippi; while the schoolboy has been 

 taught that, out of the "Louisiana purchase" of 1803, alone, have already 

 been ff)rmed fifieen States and territories, eight of the former and seven of 

 the latter. Since it hai)pens that, in the article alread}^ referred to (Ameri- 

 can Journal of Numismatics, Vol. IV., No. 9, for January, 1870), the 

 present writer, just two centuries after the first appearance of this coin, in- 

 troduced it to American collectors as a new '• Colonial," not known to them 

 'before, and proper to take the place usurped by one familiar to the numis- 

 'matic fraternity under the name "Louisiana copper," or "R F," he 

 must now again insist on the. correctness of this view, and re-affirm that 

 the GLORIAM REGNI is the earliest colonial coin of at least half the 

 States of the Union. Of course we do not mean that it actually circulated 

 in the whole vast region menticmed; but it may have appeared acciden- 

 tally in any part thereof, and, wherever it did so appear, it was, in the 



