[m'lachlan] copper CURRENCY OF THE CANADIAN BANKS 219 



and a number of merohants of Quebec examined regarding the evil, 

 nothing was done save to suggest a more stringent enforcement of the 

 law of 1808 against importing spurious copper coin. This law was 

 simply a revision of the ordinance of 1777 above mentioned. In the 

 Provinces of Upper Canada and Nova Scotia the same evils affected 

 the circulation. In the latter province the government rose to the 

 occasion and grappled ^vith the difficulty by providing a special copper 

 coinage for the province.^ 



As a result of this discrediting of the spurious copper currency, 

 the stringent enforcemient of the law against its importation and 

 manufacture and the failure to provide an acceptable form of change, 

 there came another dearth of copper change. Still a remnant of the 

 old halfpence of Greorge III, but wthich had become so worn as to be 

 hardly legible, continued to circulate, wihich were the only truly legal 

 copper coin. Now some of the merchants, who for profit were ever 

 ready to provide the necessary change, precluded from importing 

 by the effectual supervision of the customs authorities, started coining 

 for themselves. And taking for their patterns the worn copper coppers 

 in circulation they produced something most barbarous in design and 

 execution. The obverse bore an indistinct head without any inscrip- 

 tion and the reverse a hideous caricature for Britannia or an indes- 

 cribable harp. These nondescripts the illiterate habitants accepted 

 without question while they rejected the well executed " Wellington 

 halfpenny tokens " of the previous decade. That the quantity issued 

 was large is attested by the fact that thirty varieties are known in all 

 stages of indistinctness and degeneracy down to plain discs of copper, 

 ilactaggart thus described the copper circulation of Canada in 1828; 

 '■ While thie French keep gabbling about quinze sous and trente sous, 

 which are perplexing to comprehend every sort of copper-piece is an 

 halfpenny. I have no less than 120 different kinds, the greater part 

 of them old copper coins of Britain and Merchants' tokens all over the 

 world. If a lot of farthings be taken into a smithenj and receive a 

 blow from a sledge-hammer on tjie anvil, they will then be excellent 

 Canadian coppers, or half-pennies." ^ 



At a later date, when these imitations of worn coins had become 

 discredited, several tons of an English trade token dated 1812, having 

 the head of George III within a wreath on the obverse and a female 

 seated on a bale of goods on the reverse, were imported by Joseph 

 Tiffin, a prominent merchant of the time. Soon this token was 

 counterfeited and large quantities of such brass imitations were passed 



' This coinage I have descnlbed in a communication to the Royal Society 

 of Canada. See Transactions, Vol. X., section IL, page 35. 



2 Three years in Canada, 1826-7-8. By John Mactaggart, London, 1829, 

 Vol. I., page 321. 



