The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Vaughan, a Discourse of Coin and Coinage
• Chap. I.: Of the First Invention and Use of Money.
• Chap. II.: Of the Matter of Money.
• Chap. III.: Of the Forms of the Money Anciently and Now In Use.
• Chap. IV.: Of the Proportions Held Between Gold and Silver, Antient and Modern.
• Chap. V.: Of the Raising of the Price of Money Both of Silver and Gold.
• Chap. VI.: Of Base Money.
• Chap. VII.: Of the Inconveniences In General Grown In the Matter of Money.
• Chap. VIII.: Of the Low Price of Our Silver.
• Chap. IX.: Of the Prohibition of Forrein Moneys, Especially Spanish.
• Chap. X.: Of the Unequal Coinage of Our Moneys.
• Chap. XI.: Of the Great Increase of the Proportion Between Gold and Silver, and the Things Valued By Them; By Which There Is Grown a Greater Want of Money In England Than Was In Antient Times, and of the Causes Thereof, and of the Remedies Which May
• Chap. XII.: Of the Raising of the Price of Moneys By Our Neighbours, and the Defect of Our Not Raising of Our Moneys Accordingly.
• Chap. XIII.: Of the Benefits Which Do Grow Unto the State By the Raising of Moneys, and the Prejudices Which Do By Not Raising of It.
• Chap. XIV.: The Benefits Which Do Grow to the State By the Not Raising of Money, and the Prejudices Which Do Grow By the Raising of It.
• Chap. XV.: Examinations of the Reasons For the Raising of Money.
• Chap. XVI.: Examinations of the Reasons For the Not Raising of Money.
• Chap. XVII.: Of Contracting With Forrein Nations By Ambassadors to Keep Their Moneys At a Certain Standard.
• Chap. XVIII.: Of the Ordaining of Solid Payments.
• Chap. XIX.: Of Equalizing the Exchange.
• Chap. XX.: Of Reducing Moneys to the Lowness of Ancient Values.
• Chap. XXI.: Of Raising Our Moneys According to the Raising of Our Neighbours.
• Chap. XXII.: Of Introducing Two Different Species of Money.
• Chap. XXIII.: Of Coining of Moneys Without Distinction of Weights.
• Lord Coke’s Account of Coin and Coining.
• Cotton, a Speech Touching the Alteration of Coin.
• The Answer of the Committees Appointed By Your Lordships to the Proposition Delivered By Some Officers of the Mint, For Infeebling His Majesties Monies of Gold and Silver.
• The First Part. the Preamble.
• Questions to Be Proposed to the Merchants, Mint Masters, and Goldsmiths Concerning the Alteration of the Silver-monies.
• Certain General Rules Collected Concerning Money and Bullion Out of the Late Consultation At Court.
• Advice of His Majesty’s Council of Trade, Concerning the Exportation of Gold and Silver In Foreign Coins and Bullion. (concluded December 11. 1660.)
• Reasons Aud Arguments For the Free Exportation of Gold and Silver In Foreign Coin and Bullion.
• Sir William Pettys Quantulumcunque Concerning Money, 1682.
• Questions.
• A Report Containing an Essay For the Amendment of Silver Coins
• The Second General Head Concerning the Present State and Condition of the Gold and Silver Conis.
• The Third General Head Discusses This Question, Whether It Be Or Be Not Absolutely Necessary At This Time to Re-establish the Coins.
• The Fourth General Head Is to Propose the Means That Must Be Obtained, and the Proper Methods to Be Used In and For the Re-establishment of the Silver Coins.
• The Fifth General Head Considers What Must Supply the Commerce, Pay Taxes, &c. Whilst the Clipt Money Is Under Its New Fabrication.
• In Quodam Libro Vocato Nigro Scripto Tempore Regis Henrici Secundi, Per Gervasium Tilburiensem, De Necessariis Scaccarii, Remanente In Curia Receptæ Scaccarii, Inter Alia Sic Continetur.
• A Computation of the Common Weight of a Hundred Pounds By Tale, In Ordinary Silver Money At This Day, Taken From a Medium of the Bags, Weighed At the Receipt of Exchequer, In May, June, and July Last.
• Note On the Re-coinage of 1696-99.
• Representations of Sir Isaac Newton On the Subject of Money. 1712-1717.
• Representation First
• Representation Second.
• Representation Third.
• Tables Illustrative of the Successive Changes In the Standard, In the Weight of the Coins, and In the Relative Values of Gold and Silver In England, From the Conquest Down to 1717.
• Note On Scotch Money, With Tables Showing the Successive Changes In the Standard In the Weight of the Coins, and In the Relative Values of Gold and Silver, From 1107 to 1707, When Scotland Ceased to Have a Peculiar Coinage.
• Observations On Coin In General, With Some Proposals For Regulating the Value of Coin In Ireland.
• Essays On Money and Coin I
• Part I.: The Theories of Commerce, Money, and Exchanges.
• Chapter I.—: Of the Nature and Origin of Wealth and Commerce.
• Chapter II.—: Of Money and Coins.
• Chapter III.: Of Exchanges.
• Essays On Money and Coin Ii
• The Preface.
• Part II.
• Chapter I.: A Summary Account of All the Alterations That Have Been Made In Our Standard of Money, From the Norman Conquest to the Present Time, With the Opinions of Some Very Eminent Men Upon Those Kinds of Measures.
• Chapter II.: The Established Standard of Money Should Not Be Violated Or Altered, Under Any Pretence Whatsoever.
• Postscript. of Standard Measures.
• Reflections On Coin In General
• Raper, an Inquiry Into the Value of the Ancient Greek and Roman Money.
• Introduction.
• § 1.: Of the Attic Drachm.
• § II.: Of the Eginean and Euboïc Talents.
• § III.: Of the Roman Money.
• § 4.: Of the Value of Gold In Greece and Rome.
• § V.: Of the Value of the Ancient Greek and Roman Money.
• Conclusion.
• Tables Showing the Denominations of the Principal Greek and Roman Coins, and Their Values In Sterling Money,

CHAP. XXII.

Of introducing two different Species of Money.

THE Difficulties and Debate of the former Proposition have produced this, set down in the Title of this Chapter: For if to let our Money stand still in the same Condition, when our Neighbours do raise theirs, be a means to drain away our own Money from us, and to divert that increase of Stock which otherwise should come unto us, and consequently occasion the decay of our own Trades and Manufactures, and the increase of Forrein, as in the former Propositions hath been disputed, Then it were good to raise our Moneys when our Neighbours raise theirs. But if this raising of our Moneys do introduce an unjust Oppression to all those, who do live upon the Rents of their Lands, upon Pensions, upon Fees, upon Wages, or otherwise upon any other Reward of their Industry, if it most of all disables the King, and in the end doth threaten an extream Confusion and Disorder, then is this good of Raising so allayed with the evil that followeth it, that we were as good if not better to be without it: From these Considerations hath this Proposition risen, by which, the Authors thereof do presume, that we may both raise our Moneys as we find occasion and yet not raise; though they seem contradictory: and we receive all the Benefits, which the raising of Money doth bring with it, and yet avoid all the Inconveniences which are alledged to follow it. Now the Propositions which have been made in this kind, both here and in other parts are very many, and differing one from another in their Proportions, and in some other subtile and by considerations, which if they should be set down in particular, would much perplex the Subject. I will therefore by supposition set down a Proposition in a plain and easie Proportion for the more ready apprehension of the Reader.

As for Example, Suppose the King should coin new twenty shilling pieces, which should hold in intrinsical value but eighteen shillings and four pence in Proportion to the present Gold; and new shillings, which should hold but eleven pence in Proportion to the shillings of the present standard, and then it should be ordain’d, that all former Contracts already past, should be acquitted in old Money, or else in new Money, valuing every 20s. but at 18s. 4d. and so in Proportion of lesser sums; but that all new contracts should be paid afterwards in new Money, or else in old, valuing every 18s. 4d. of the old Money at 20s. of the new. By this means, say the Authors of this proposition, we shall bring back our own Money and drain away the Money of our Neighbours, and Trades and Manufactures shall flourish in consequence; yet our Moneys are raised, and yet no man shall receive any injustice by it, for both the King and all other Lords of Lands and antient Rents, and all such who have lent Money or contracted upon former Wages, shall be paid in Money formerly current, or else in new proportionable to the old. And all those which are to pay Money, either out of their own Industry or Labours, or out of the fruits of the earth, or by any other means, when they do see that they must contract for new Money, apparently, according to the Proportion set down, worse than the old, they will help themselves by raising their price in Proportion unto it. There may likewise be alledged Examples for this Proposition, as in Ireland where sterling Money and Irish Money are both current, the one a fourth worse than the other without any Inconvenience. And it seemeth that anciently before the time of Edward the first in England, there were Moneys current of several standards; for although there be a few Records left of Mint matters, more antient than Edward the Third, yet Anno sexto Reg. Johannis membrana septima Dorso, certain old Money of baser standard was made current; But so, as no Jew or Merchant stranger might buy Merchandize, or pay debts with it, or any thing else, (but only victum et vestitum with that old Money,) but in grossa et forti Moneta. And in France, until the time of Philip le Bell (who was contemporant with Edward the Second) it seemeth that there were used several species of Money, And Edicts were made what Contracts should be acquitted in one species and what in another.

But I will come now, as in the former, to the examination of this Proposition. First, the extreme Confusion is to be considered which it will bring among the People by raising Questions what is to be paid in old Money and what is to be paid in new Money.

As for Example, a man who lent Money before the time appointed for the currency of this Money, after the day, receiveth interest for it, and so lets it run on, Whether shall this be interpreted an old contract or a new? and divers other Questions of like nature will arise. But suppose that such Prudence were used before hand as all such Questions might be prevented, yet certainly the intricasie of the accounts between the old Money and the new, by Reason of the confused Fractions which are in it, would be a great molestation to the People: But there lurketh a much greater Inconvenience which would not be discovered but by length of time; which is when you have thus raised the price of your Money, when other Nations shall raise theirs again beyond your new Money, you must then be enforced to make a second new Money of less intrinsical value than the first, and then again, all Contracts between the first and the second new Money, are to be acquitted in the first new Money, or in the second new Money, valued in Proportion to the first, and so in consequence of time, a third new Money would be coined, and a fourth, and a fifth, and so forward; that by degrees both the multiplicity of the Moneys, and the variety of the times of the contracts would pass all humane comprehension.

As for Examples alledged, they make more against the Proposition than for it; for I doubt not, but in the time of King John, and afore and after that, there were great Varieties and Confusions in the Moneys current, and the Histories of those Times are full of Complaints upon that Subject. And therefore they do most highly magnify the Wisdom of King Edward the First, who settled a uniformity in that Subject, by introducing one certain species of sterling Coin.

And for the Example of France, the Histories of that Country do not only justifie that there were great Confusions in this Subject in those times, but by great Insurrections of the People and Rebellions upon that occasion, insomuch, as the reputed Authors of those Inventions were sacrificed to appease the popular Rage.