COINAGE. 



303 



the body of the mill, and turns it with so much force, 

 that by depressing the upper square upon that of the 

 effigy* tne planchet lying between both, being sud- 

 denly and violently compressed, receives both uie im- 

 pressions in the twinkling of an eye. 



The mode of manufacturing the dies is very curi- 

 ous. An original design is engraven upon a piece of 

 soft cast steel of the size of the money to be coined. 

 The table of the die must be perfectly level or square. 

 The impression is cut into the steel, and its depth is 

 in proportion to the relief, ultimately required upon 

 the face of the coin. When the engraving is finish- 

 ed, the die is then hardened. This is a very nice pro- 

 cess, and requires considerable care to perform it. 

 The die is put into a cast iron pot, completely embed- 

 ded in animal charcoal, chiefly made from leather. 

 The pot is placed in an air furnace, in which coke or 

 charcoal is burned, which gives a steady and uniform 

 degree of heat. The die having endured its proper 

 degree of heat, is withdrawn from the furnace, and 

 plunged into a large cistern of cold water, into which 

 a stream is constantly kept flowing. If the steel, 

 as sometimes happens, is faulty, or heated to excess, 

 it will fly to pieces, and all the artist's labours be lost. 

 If perfect, however, it is now placed in the multiply- 

 big die-press. An impression is thus taken from 

 the hardened die upon a blank die of cast steel, simi- 

 lar to the mode of impressing the money. The blank 

 die is fixed to the lower die of the coining press, and 

 by working the screw of the press, which has very 

 long and heavily loaded arms, the matrix is made to 

 strike the blank die with great force, and bring its 

 impression in raised relief upon its surface. The hard- 

 ness following this violent compression of the steel 

 is so great, that a proper impression of the matrix 

 cannot be procured without annealing and softening 

 the die perhaps two or three times, which is done in 

 iron pots, as in the case of hardening, but without 

 cooling them so hastily. An impression taken this 

 way is called a puncheon die. When the die sinker 

 has given all the more delicate lines of the original 

 to it, it is then hardened in the same manner as its 

 original, and in its turn employed to give impressions 

 to blank dies by a similar process, the impression be- 

 ing sunk into the dies, which again being used for 

 coinage, gives the impression in raised relief to the 

 money. 



This important department of the mint is under 

 the superintendence of the clerk of the irons, who 

 never suffers the multiplying press to be used but in 

 his presence. He has also the care of all the dies, 

 and must account to the Board of Management for 

 all matrices, puncheons, and dies made and destroyed 

 in the mint. 



Silver coins were, till nearly two centuries after 

 the conquest, the only money of British manufacture. 

 Henry III., towards the end of his reign, coined a few 

 gold pieces, which were so little circulated, that, 

 until an accident brought the fact to light in the 

 year 1732, Edward III. had always been supposed 

 the first of our kings who made gold money. At the 

 conquest, the pound sterling was equal to a Tower 

 pound * of silver of the old standard, and it continued 

 of this weight till the 28th of Edward I. It was di- 

 vided into twenty shillings, and each shilling into 

 twelve pennies, of the weight of twenty-four grains 

 each. Nothing, therefore, could have been more 

 simple or convenient in every respect than this system 

 of coinage, which subsisted unaltered for two centu- 

 ries, and till several years after a second metal had 

 been introduced into the circulation. 



*The Tower or Rocbelle pound, used in our mint until 

 18th Henry VIII., was three-fourths of an ounce leas than 

 the pound Troy. Since that year the pound Troy has been 

 used. 



Edward I. first debased the pound sterling, by 

 coining it into twenty shillings and threepence. Ed- 

 ward III. by three several reductions, brought it to 

 twenty-five shillings in tale ; Henry IV. reduced it to 

 thirty ; Edward IV. to thirty-seven and sixpence; 

 Henry VIII. to 42s 2d in the 18th year of his reign. 

 Passing over the changes which happened between 

 this and the second of Elizabeth, she, by two reduc- 

 tions, brought the Tower pound to 58s l|d, or the 

 pound Troy to 62 shillings, at which it still remains. 

 Other operations of the same kind have since been in 

 agitation at different periods; James I. had taken 

 measures for a new reduction, when he was induced 

 to give it up, chiefly by the sage counsels of Lord 

 Bacon. The speech of Sir Robert Cotton to the 

 same purpose, in the reign of Charles I., and its salu- 

 tary effects, are well known ; and Mr Locke had the 

 honour of crushing the last attempt of this nature, 

 which has been made with any prospect of success, 

 by his celebrated treatise on the value of money. 



The debasements of the gold coin have been 

 made both by a diminution of their weight, and an 

 increase of their denomination, but principally in 

 the latter way, and with the view of adjusting 

 them to the value of the silver currency during 

 its successive changes, both real and nominal. 

 The adjustment was made in the former way, at the 

 two last debasements of silver, in Edward III.'s 

 reign, and at the debasement of Henry IV. In the 

 subsequent debasements it has been made by the lat- 

 ter method ; but when the nominal value of the cur- 

 rent gold was raised, the sovereign generally found 

 it expedient to issue new gold coins of the former no- 

 minal value. Thus, when Edward IV. debased his 

 silver, he raised the gold noble from Os. 8d. to 8s. 4d. ; 

 but he soon after coined angels at 6s. 8d. the old 

 value of the noble, and angelets equal to the former 

 half nobles; and when Henry VIII. first raised the 

 angel from 6s. 8d. to 7s. 6d., he corned george- 

 nobles of 6s. 8d. When the last reduction of the sil- 

 ver took place in Elizabeth's reign, she fixed the rate 

 of gold to silver in coins of the old standard, at 

 1OJS to 1, and in those of the new (or of crown gold) 

 at lOH to 1. Since that period, the changes in the 

 gold coin have only been calculated to Keep pace 

 with the gradual alterations in the relative real val- 

 ues of the two precious metals. It is remarkable 

 that no such alteration seems to have called for a 

 readjustment of the coinage till the beginning of 

 James I.'s reign, although America had been discov- 

 ered above a century, and even the richest of the sil- 

 ver mines, those of Potosi, upwards of fifty years ; 

 nay, Elizabeth, about the beginning of the seven- 

 teenth century, valued the gold at a lower rate, in 

 proportion to the silver, than Edward III. had done ; 

 yet it is well known that the average silver price of 

 wheat, during the last half of the sixteenth century, 

 was nearly five times its silver price during the first 

 half. (See the digression concerning the value of sil- 

 ver in the Wealth of Nations, particularly the tables at 

 the end of Book I. chap. 11.) We should expect to 

 find the whole gold coin exported, therefore, during 

 this period, in consequence of the mint prices of the 

 two metals being so much nearer each other than 

 their market prices. But although no great expor- 

 tation of gold seems to have been the result of this 

 discrepancy, soon after James's accession, it was 

 found necesary to raise the mint price of gold ; and, 

 by three several operations, that prince brought the 

 proportion between gold and silver to 13 \\ to 1, in 

 coins of the old standard, and 131 i to 1, in those of 

 the new. After the Restoration it was raised still 

 further ; and the whole rise, during sixty years from 

 the union of the crowns, was 32 J per cent. But not- 

 withstanding the great depreciation of silver, from 



