40 
of storing the gold in a safe place, and issuing written promises to 
pay gold out of that store when demanded. These documents 
(bank notes) greatly facilitated trade. Hy their aid the ownership 
of very large amounts of gold can easily be transferred from one 
person to another without the gold itself being moved. The chief 
drawback to the use of l^ank Notes is their liability to destruction 
by fire, and the ease with which they enable a thief to get away 
with sums which he could not transport at all in the form of gold 
or silver. When in iuiropc the currency was chiefly made up of 
gold, silver, and notes, highway robbery was very rife. A later 
development of paper currency, the Bank cheque however put an 
end to that form of theft, d'he cheque form is useless until signed 
by someone who has money deposited at the Rank, while the 
devices of crossing and making the cheque payable only to the 
wTitten order of the payee, have provided means by which pay- 
ments of any amount can be made without handling anj’thing more 
valuable than a piece of ])aper. Rills of Exchange, Money Orders, 
Postal Notes and Treasury Notes are still further developments of 
paper currency. When metallic currency is used the payee receives 
a commodity of the value of the thing he has parted with, whereas 
if he takes paper he has received that which of itself is of no value, 
and can only be used by him as a medium of further exchange pro- 
vided that all parties concerned are satisfied as to the good faith 
and ability of the person named upon the document to meet the de- 
mand for the standard metal when it is ultimately made. 
It will be seen that this last stage constitute.s a sort of per- 
fected barter, because the only things of value which are actually 
passed from hand to hand are the goods. 
It is interesting to trace how our present system of currency: 
a gold standard, with gold coins and silver, bronze and paper 
tokens, came into being. 
In Anglo-Saxon times the standard of value w-as the pound 
sterling, divided into 240 silver pence. That is to say, a pound 
weight of silver of the fineness used by the Easterlings (the name 
given by the Angles and Saxons to their ancestors on the Contin- 
ent). That fineness was 11 oz. 2 dwt. of pure silver, and IS dwt. 
of alloy, w'hich can be expressed in the modern decimal system of 
recording fineness by the figures .920. This fineness of the silver 
coins of Britain has remained unchanged down to the present day, 
except for a period of lo years in Tudor times, when the following 
debasement took place : — 
Henry VTIL: 1548, fineness .883. 
Edward VI : 
Elizabeth : 
1545 „ 
.500. 
1548 
.383. 
1550 
,500. 
1551 
,250. 
1553 
.921. 
1558 fineness restored to .925. 
