52 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



"COINAGE AND MONEY." 



BY H. B. SMALL, OTTAWA. 

 Read before the HamHton Association, loth April, iSgo. 



It has been said that if money has made men worse than they 

 were before it, it has also introduced conveniences which previous 

 generations did not possess. 



When in the days of old there was no such thing as any currency 

 of money, all transactions were carried on by barter — exchanging 

 one thing for another, and it was to obviate the inconvenience of 

 this, and to obtain a uniformity of value that coin was brought into 

 use ; first, in the unwieldy state of bullion, when payments were 

 made by weight, and clipping off so much as was necessary, after- 

 wards by pieces of metal rudely stamped with their weight, and 

 finally in the medallion form, existing to the present day. 



At one period of history cattle seem to have been the sole form 

 of money in use, and from the Latin word pecus, which means cat- 

 tle, the word pecunia (money) was derived, and so familiar nowadays 

 in the expression pecuniary embarrassments, or pecuniary transac- 

 tions. It is not so very long ago on this continent, that skins were 

 used to represent a money standard, especially at the old Hudson Bay 

 posts ; whilst dried fish have stood in lieu of cash amongst the New- 

 foundlanders, and in the more primitive parts of Nova Scotia, The 

 word money is derived from the fact of the early Roman coins being 

 struck in the temple of Juno Moneta, that latter appellation coming 

 from the word " monere " to warn, because that temple was built on 

 the spot where Manlius heard the Gauls approaching to attack the 

 city. Coin is derived from the word cuneo, to force in. All civil- 

 ized nations have gold as the standard of money, and all other cir- 

 culating media are but the representatives of that standard. 



In Africa where the human race is very low in the scale, a small 

 shell — a specie of cowrie — ^forms the circulating medium ; in Abys- 

 sinia, salt, bricks and beads are used, whilst the ancient Britons 

 employed iron and bronze rings for that purpose. The Greeks of 



