THE HISTORY OF CURRENCY

1252 TO 1896

BY W.A. SHAW

[1896]

Reprints of Economic Classics Augustus M. Kelley Publishers NEW YORK 1967

First Edition 1895 (London: Wilsons & Milne, 29 Paternoster Row, 1895)

Reprinted 1967 by AUGUSTUS M. KELLEY PUBLISHERS From Second Edition of 1896

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 67-20086

Printed in the United States of America by Sentry Press, New York, N.Y. 10019

THE HISTORY OF CURRENCY

1252 TO 1894

Being an Account of the Gold and Silver Moneys and Monetary Standards of Europe and America, together with an Examination of the effects of Currency and Exchange Phenomena on Commercial and National Progress and Well-being

BY W.A. SHAW, M.A.

LATE BERKELEY FELLOW OF THE OWENS COLLEGE FELLOW OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL AND ROYAL STATISTICAL SOCIETIES

Second Edition

New York: G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS London: WILSONS & MILNE 1896

TO

RICHARD COPLEY CHRISTIE

THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED IN MEMORY OF A FRIENDSHIP OF PECULIAR GRACE AND INSPIRATION

PREFACE

The purpose of this book is twofold—first and foremost, to illustrate a question of principle by the aid of historic test and application; secondly, to furnish for the use of historical students an elementary handbook of the currencies of the more important European states from the thirteenth century downwards.

Little need be said as to this latter purpose. The total omission of the historic, reasoned, and consecutive study of currency history—the most important domain of practical economics—from the curriculum of every university in the land is matter for surprise and regret, and can only be attributed to the lack of an initiative and of a handbook.

As to the former purpose, there is no field of history so strewn with scientific (i.e. comparative and prophetic) possibilities as economic history; and in economic history there is no department in which the study of the experience of other times and nations is more necessary and resultful, lesson-full, wisdom-full, than the domain of currency. The verdict of history

on the great problem of the nineteenth century—bimetallism—is clear and crushing and final, and against the evidence of history no gainsaying of theory ought for a moment to stand.

Throughout mediæval Europe and up to the close of the eighteenth century the currency of Europe was practically bimetallic—practically, because actually so without the prescription of a law of tender, and without the allowance of any theoretic grasp or conception of the practice as distinctively what nowadays we understand as bimetallic.

The conception of a law of tender is quite modern. And the evolution of the idea of such a law has gone hand in hand with the evolution of a conception of monetary theory on the part of the legislator—that is, with the bitter experience which for want of such a conception Europe endured for centuries. In all systems of jurisprudence money and minting appertains to the kingly office, and the development of the law of tender is to be traced in royal proclamations of the King in Council for long before it became the subject of parliamentary legislation. For centuries, such proclamations were issued, referring to a prohibition of export of the precious metals, banishing foreign coins from the land, or, again, permitting their circulation, and, in that case, prescribing the rough tariff or rate according to which (foreign) coin for (native) coin they should be current. In such proclamations there is no idea of separating the two metals, gold and

silver; there is no idea of a law of tender; there is no intention to declare a ratio; there is no conception of bullion apart from coin. The two metals had grown to be the circulating and exchange medium; they were actually there, and all that had to be done was to keep them there. The advantage which was to be derived from a trade in bullion, and from an understanding of the effects of differently-prevailing ratios in different countries, was known only to the Jew and the Italian. They plied their trade in secret, and the legislator was only apprised of the result by suddenly finding a slipping away and dearth of coinage. Then the legislator altered the tariff, and gradually rose to the conception of the ratio as underlying this process of seduction. Then, as a further defence of a particular class of coins, he imposed a limitation on the tender of such, so as to prevent bullion operations on it. This limitation was the first development of a law of tender. Throughout, from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, both gold and silver had been actually employed in European commerce without any idea either of declaring or of restricting the tender, whether of the one or the other.

The final outcome of the application of the law of tender was the development of the modern monometallic system—a system in which alone lay the safeguard against the operation of the bullionist. It was only at the close of the eighteenth century that England evolved this system and flung away the

last remains of that mediæval ignorance which had brought with it such a dower of mishap. France has taken almost a century of further experience before arriving at the same point of development.

Another point. At the time that England was shaking off the mediæval system France, too, was accomplishing a reform of her money system. It stopped half-way. The old kingly prerogative of altering the coinage was taken away, the unit of the currency was declared definite and unchangeable, and the seigniorage on minting was abolished. So much was accomplished by her law of 1803. But no further application was made of the law of tender than to throw the sanction of legal enactment over that mediæval system which had been the bane of France since first two metals found circulation in her bounds. As far as tender is concerned, there is no difference between the practice of the French monetary system in 1726 and that of 1803. The system was bimetallic in both cases—in the first case, legally by recognition and as resting on the royal jurisdiction; in the second case, legally by direct legislative or parliamentary enactment. The idea that the law of 1803 created a new system and a new heaven for France is doubly absurd. It was a continuation of a very old and a very danger-fraught system, with its roots deep in mediæval ignorance and practice.

In addition to this—and quite as demonstrably—there was no conception of a theory of bimetallism in

1803, nor any conception of a bimetallic function to be performed for the good of the human race by bimetallic France. This is a conception of the schools, and bred of later needs and hopes and fears. The modern theory of bimetallism is almost the only instance in history of a theory growing not out of practice, but of the failure of practice; resting not on data verified, but on data falsified and censure-marked. No words can be too strong of condemnation for the theorising of the bimetallist who, by sheer imaginings, tries to justify