CURRENCY AND COINAGE 215 



tried to impose a brass coinage at the value of copper on 

 his unfortunate people by an enforced death penalty, but 

 to no purpose. He found that killing individuals as 

 examples could not bring the community to face general 

 commercial ruin to his advantage. 



We have now reached our goal, the coin of the realm 

 proper the piece of metal with a fixed legal exchange 

 value, shown by its shape and the marks thereon attest- 

 ing its weight and fineness, i.e. its exact adaptation to 

 its purpose. By its very shape an English sixpence 

 shows its evolution, for the roundness has been arrived 

 at after painful efforts to try the effect of every form 

 oblong, oblate-spheroid, square, octagonal, hexagonal. 

 For every other form will cut the bag or receptacle that 

 holds quantities, and square corners will get damaged 

 by use, causing reduction in weight. The milled edge pre- 

 vents fraudulent shrinkage by stripping off and reducing 

 the rim. By sinking the whole die-stamp lower than 

 the rim specimens can be piled indefinitely on each other, 

 or put away in rolls occupying the smallest practicable 

 space. The holes in ' cash,' and through the cash in 

 such very modern coins as the nickels of Belgium where 

 the hole is used merely for differentiation, have an old 

 descent from the hole in the handle of the conventional 

 4 knife-money ' of China, which permitted articles for 

 currency to be strung together. All this represents 

 a very slow evolution. In very fact English sixpences, 

 French francs, and pieces of any other similar money 

 one can mention, the uses to which they are put and the 

 manner in which they are used, are all, like their owners 

 themselves, in obedience to the natural law of heredity, 

 heirs of all the ages. 



Before closing these remarks I will briefly note one or 

 two points of some importance, as to which confusion 



