The Standard of Value. 



five hundred before the Christian era, the idea was evolved that if a 

 piece of gold or of silver was to be moulded into certain form and 

 to receive a reliable stamp indicating its weight and fineness, it would 

 add greatly to the convenience of commerce. Hence arose coinage. 

 And hence we find that about the dates above stated, India, Persia and 

 Greece issued coined money ; and later Rome also issued coins. These 

 coins generally represented weights, and many of them took the name 

 of weights. 



Later nations have also formed their coinage systems on the basis 

 of weights. Charlemagne in the ninth century, and England, after 

 the conquest, made the pound iveight of silver (the Eochelle pound or 

 Tower pound) their unit of money for the expression of value; al- 

 though I believe neither ever issued a coin of silver more important 

 than for a fraction of the pound. 



The use of the money metals in coinage as standards of value, seems 

 to have become settled on a solid basis, when a new form of fraud is in- 

 vented. The people among the comparatively modern commercial 

 nations have, through generations, become accustomed to the use of 

 certain coins by name; when it occurs to the reigning sovereign that 

 he may turn a penny — honest or otherwise — by lightening the 

 weight of metal in the current coin or in debasing its quality. The 

 prerogative of coining money is made to reside solely in the sovereign. 

 The new coin, at first only slightly decreased in weight, is declared 

 by royal decree of equal value to those in circulation, and they pass 

 without serious question. Encouraged by this trial, the ruling au- 

 thorities next order a recoinage, cutting off a considerably larger frac- 

 tion of the weight of the coin, the decree of the crown again ordering 

 the new coin to be taken and paid out, under the same name and at 

 the same value, as the older coin. So the successive diminutions 

 of the coins of the realm go on from time to time, until at last the 

 found gets to be the mere fraction of what its name originally indicated, 

 and the people have been defrauded out of the entire difference. 



William the Conqueror in the eleventh century established the pound 

 weight of silver, nine hundred and twenty-five parts fine, and seventy- 

 five parts alloy, as the standard of value for England. It so remained for 

 two and a third centuries when, in the year 1300, Edward I began the 

 game of debasing the standard. It is true he exhibited great 

 modesty in the extent of his plunder. He only coined the pound 

 weight of standard silver, which had heretofore been represented 

 by twenty shilling coins, or by two hundred and forty pennies, 

 into twenty shillings and three pence, a debasement of only one 



