to buy or sell a farthing's worth of goods, he
was obliged to weigh the farthing. The operation
of assaying is still more difficult, still
more tedious; and, unless part of the metal is
fairly melted in the crucible, with proper dissolvents,
any conclusion that can be drawn
from it is extremely uncertain. Before the
institution of coined money, however, unless
they went through this tedious and difficult
operation, people must always have been liable
to the grossest frauds and impositions; and
instead of a pound weight of pure silver, or
pure copper, might receive, in exchange for
their goods, an adulterated composition of the
coarsest and cheapest materials, which had,
however, in their outward appearance, been
made to resemble these metals. To prevent
such abuses, to facilitate exchanges, and thereby
to encourage all sorts of industry and commerce,
it has been found necessary, in all
countries that have made any considerable advances
towards improvement, to affix a public
stamp upon certain quantities of such particular
metals, as were in those countries commonly
made use of to purchase goods. Hence
the origin of coined money, and of those public
offices called mints; institutions exactly
of the same nature with these of the aulnagers
and stamp-masters of woollen and linen cloth.
All of them are equally meant to ascertain,
by means of a public stamp, the quantity and
uniform goodness of those different commodities
when brought to market.
The first public stamps of this kind that
were affixed to the current metals, seem in
many cases to have been intended to ascertain,
what it was both most difficult and most important
to ascertain, the goodness or fineness
of the metal, and to have resembled the sterling
mark which is at present affixed to plate
and bars of silver, or the Spanish mark which
is sometimes affixed to ingots of gold, and
which, being struck only upon one side of the
piece, and not covering the whole surface, ascertains
the fineness, but not the weight of
the metal. Abraham weighs to Ephron the
four hundred shekels of silver which he had
agreed to pay for the field of Machpelah.
They are said, however, to be the current
money of the merchant, and yet are received
by weight, and not by tale, in the same manner
as ingots of gold and bars of silver are at
present. The revenues of the ancient Saxon
kings of England are said to have been paid,
not in money, but in kind, that is, in victuals
and provisions of all sorts. William the Conqueror
introduced the custom of paying them
in money. This money, however, was for a
long time, received at the exchequer, by
weight, and not by tale.
The inconveniency and difficulty of weighing
those metals with exactness, gave occasion
to the institution of coins, of which the stamp,
covering entirely both sides of the piece, and
sometimes the edges too, was supposed to ascertain
not only the fineness, but the weight
of the metal. Such coins, therefore, were received
by tale, as at present, without the
trouble of weighing.
The denominations of those coins seem originally
to have expressed the weight or quantity
of metal contained in them. In the time
of Servius Tullius, who first coined money at
Rome, the Roman as or pondo contained a
Roman pound of good copper. It was divided,
in the same manner as our Troyes
pound, into twelve ounces, each of which
contained a real ounce of good copper. The
English pound sterling, in the time of Edward I.
contained a pound, Tower weight, of
silver of a known fineness. The Tower
pound seems to have been something more
than the Roman pound, and something less
than the Troyes pound. This last was not
introduced into the mint of England till the
18th of Henry the VIII. The French livre
contained, in the time of Charlemagne, a
pound, Troyes weight, of silver of a known
fineness. The fair of Troyes in Champaign
was at that time frequented by all the nations
of Europe, and the weights and measures of
so famous a market were generally know
and esteemed. The Scots money pound contained,
from the time of Alexander the First
to that of Robert Bruce, a pound of silver of
the same weight and fineness with the English
pound sterling. English, French, and
Scots pennies, too, contained all of them originally
a real penny-weight of silver, the
twentieth part of an ounce, and the two
hundred-and-fortieth part of a pound. The
shilling, too, seems originally to have been
the denomination of a weight. When wheat
is at twelve shillings the quarter, says an ancient
statute of Henry III. then wastel bread of a
farthing shall weigh eleven shillings and fourpence.
The proportion, however, between
the shilling, and either the penny on the one
hand, or the pound on the other, seems not to
have been so constant and uniform as that between
the penny and the pound. During
the first race of the kings of France, the
French sou or shilling appears upon different
occasions to have contained five, twelve,
twenty, and forty pennies. Among the ancient
Saxons, a shilling appears at one time
to have contained only five pennies, and it is
not improbable that it may have been as variable
among them as among their neighbours,
the ancient Franks. From the time of Charlemagne
among the French, and from that of
William the Conqueror among the English,
the proportion between the pound, the shilling,
and the penny, seems to have been uniformly
the same as at present, though the
value of each has been very different; for in
every country of the world, I believe, the avarice
and injustice of princes and sovereign
states, abusing the confidence of their subjects,
have by degrees diminished the real quantity