THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 6 1 



are flooded with paper currency from one pound upwards. As a 

 rule, indeed, the colonists prefer paper to gold; still the notes 

 of one colony can only be cashed in another by the payment of a 

 considerable discount ; and if ever the dream of Australasian feder- 

 ation becomes a reality, the unity of currency will be as vital an 

 element in the federal constitution as the unity of custom houses, 

 postoffices and colonial defences." In the United States, again, 

 gorged as are the national coffers and the bankers' strong rooms with 

 gold and silver, paper is generally preferred to bullion. The latter 

 is often contumaciously alluded to as " truck," and apologies are 

 made when it is tendered in payment. It may be that there is 

 something akin to vanity, or at all events to pardonable compla- 

 cency, in this partiality to paper money. The American does not 

 fail to remember that the old war greenbacks have been triumph- 

 antly redeemed, and that those securities, together with the almost 

 innumerable local notes — many of them of a more or less " wild 

 cat " order — have all been superseded by a national bank note, 

 locally issued, but fully secured by funds deposited in the National 

 Treasury at Washington. It is only in the Golderi State of Cali- 

 fornia that the feeling in favor of solid cash, as against paper 

 promises to pay, has not entirely disappeared, and San Francisco is 

 almost the only city in the Union where a lawyer does not object to 

 receive his fees, or a merchant his account in a rouleau of twenty 

 dollar gold pieces, splendid to look upon but somewhat cumbrous to 

 carry. An analogous fondness for the doubloon, or " onza de oro," 

 is to be found in Cuba, in Mexico, and in some states of South 

 America. Returning to Europe, we find that in Italy, although the 

 " corso forzato " has become a thing of the past and paper money 

 is redeemable for cash at par, business is almost entirely carried on 

 by means of large or small notes. Germany has got a new coinage 

 and is getting rid of small notes ; but Austria is yet subject to the 

 boon or the bane of illimitable shin-plasters. In Spain it is very 

 difficult to obtain gold for notes, and the whole Peninsula swarms 

 with spurious silver " duros " and •' pesetas;" while as regards Russia 

 there is no exaggeration in saying that many millions of the people 

 have never seen a nationally coined piece of gold or silver. Bank 

 notes, generally ragged and horribly dirty, are the popular currency, 

 and have been so ever since the time of the Crimean war ; and of 

 how many millions of the rouble and half-rouble notes in circulation 



