A UNIVERSAL MONEY.* So little notice was taken outside the
world of pure business of this interesting booklet at the time of its first appearance in 1869, that it seems quite worth while to call our readers' attention to this second edition, especially as the subject with which it deals is again one of practical interest. Mr. Bagehot had the great faculty of being entertaining even on dull sub- jects; and in a world where the average man is quite equal to being dull even on entertaining subjects, that is no trivial recommendation. No one could read this little treatise without feeling that he understood the real difficulty of the subject better, and was more completely master of the points to be aimed at and the points that it is not worth while to aim at, than he was before ; and no one could read it without feeling that his mind had been roused and his interest in things practical vivified by the reading. Many a lively subject in commonplace hands has been made far duller than was this dull subject when it got into Mr. Bagehot's skilful hands. The preface itself is very enter- taining. In it Mr. Bagehot contrasts the high economic view that "coining is an economic act which Governments do for the benefit of their subjects," with the historic fact that it really has been, in most ages of the world, a political act which they have done partly to enhance their own dignity, and still more to enrich their own coffers. " We think," he says, " that we are familiar with the misconduct of Governments from the frauds of Europe ; but it is only those who know what Asiatic currencies are, who really understand the true evil." And then he illustrates the subject by one of those happy quotations from a great Indian authority by which so many of his eco- nomic discussions have been illustrated, and by which students of his works have learned how very different a subject political economy is among the commercial nations of the West, from what it is when men try to apply such of its principles as can safely be applied to the custom-ridden civilisations of the East. Again, what can be more lively or instructive than the following, with its epigrammatic conclusion P-
" There is no ' natural ' unit of weight; no foot, no cubit; and it was ages before any sort of standard was agreed upon. The original talent was the weight in the scale, as well as coined money ; it became the principal coin because it was the largest weight. Sir George Lewis justly said that it required a ' good stroke of the imagination' to conceive a state of civilisation in which it was difficult to tell the time of day ; still more would it tax the fancy to conceive a time in which 'standard weights' came in as new things, and out of them stamped weights or coins grew. We are so used to the candle that we forget it required to be lighted."
Perhaps, indeed, it requires more imagination in the civilised man Who has got used to his large stock of conveniences and comforts, to imagine himself into a society destitute of these, than it does in the barbarian who has them not, to imagine himself into a world which contains them. It is easier to conceive a sort of fairy world where difficulties are removed, than a primeval world where every difficulty was magnified. Mr. Bagehot, too, was very amusing when he brushed aside the pedantic view of M. Chevalier that because the original coin was a simple weight of some particular metal, so the coin which gives to the commercial world its unit of account ought to be a simple weight of some particular metal, or, as M. Chevalier proposed, a piece of ten grammes in gold
" But it is on the Metric system that M. Chevalier grounds his coinage scheme. He iustly says that originally the principal coin was a principal weight in some metal; the pound sterling was a real pound's weight of silver in the beginning ; so was the Livre • 4 Pact cal Plan for Assimilating the English and American Money, as a Step towards a Universal Money. By the late Wetter Bagehot. Emend Edition. London: Longman and Co. • Tournois, which down to the Revolution continued to be the great coin of France. This is the simple notion of a ' coin '—some simple weight of a precious metal authenticated by Government, or in some way. M. Chevalier with great learning and great acuteness exemplifies this, as in the Chinese system and in other systems; and he argues that because the original coin was a. simple weight in some metal, so the new one should be too; any fractions are an incurable defect. Thus he objects to the 25-franc piece, because when written in the Metric system of weights it appears as 0.32557 grammes; and to the English sovereign, because its expression is complex too. But we cannot agree to this logic. It does not follow that the new coin ought to be a weight very simply expressible, because oldest coins in their origin were very simply expressible. The notion of a coin began so ; it could not else be made intelligible to barbarians : but we are not barbarians ; we know what a coin is well enough. We do. not care what exact weight a sovereign is ; we know it contains a certain weight of gold, because that gold is the source of its value, but we never in practice think about it. In fact, the sovereign is not easily expressible in English weights. An ounce troy coins into 3flt sovereigns, or 480 ounces make 1,869 sovereigns, and you cannot state it more easily. But no difficulty arises ; we do not think of the origin of coins ; we do not care what was the relation in the first times between simple weight and primary coin. We use our sovereigns, and we do not care. We under- stand fractions well enough to be able to weigh great masses of sovereigns when we want. A simple equation between the unit of weight and the unit of coinage may be a theoretical advantage —a determining reason for choosing between two or more units equally convenient, but it is not a primary quality in such coins ; it is not an essential requisite."
Nor is he less entertaining when he discusses the difficulty of
Englishmen dispensing with the penny as money of account, and adopting the system proposed for making the 10-franc piece (very nearly 8s.) the new unit for a money of account :—
" In the present state of the education of Englishmen the transition state is most important. In better educated parts of the world—in North Germany, for example—it is very likely that a sudden change in the modes of reckoning could be effected, but it is not so here. A great deal of counting both on paper and in the head is done by very illiterate people ; especially by women, who can do things their own way' very well, though they cannot explain what that way is, and though very often it is not easy to tell. Many a common tradesman who. now keeps or half-keeps books in our present money could not keep them at all if he were obliged to keep them in any other money. He would get ' bothered.* Pence, shillings, and sovereigns seem to him indispensable, and without them he cannot get on."
The result of such a change, says Mr. Bagehot, would be that "the anxious country shopkeeper would be frantic, and
the careless would be insolvent."
The very moderate change which Mr. Bagehot thought practicable in 1869 for all Anglo-Saxon communities is still practicable, and we heartily wish that it might be adopted.
It is to reckon decimally in a coin worth 10d. more than our present sovereign, of which the tenth part would be 2s. ld., the one-hundredth part 20., and the one-thousandth part a farthing. The advantage of this would be that the United States could also adopt the same notation for their current prices. The new unit would be their half-eagle, equivalent to ten of their half-dollars, and a hundred of their five-cent pieces ; so that they would have a decimal system almost ready-made which would be easily intelligible to our tradesmen, and in which the accounts of all English- speaking countries could be kept. The Americans would have to use five-cent pieces where we should use something of the value of 21d., and half-cents where we used farthings ; but the new system would be very easily learned by both, and would then express the current prices of England and all her Colonies, and of the whole United States, in a decimal form. Mr. Bagehot gives a simple instance of the reduction of our present coinage into the new money of account which would simply consist in reducing English money to farthings, and
putting the decimal point before the third place from the right (in the text, the word " before " appears by some slip as " after "). Of course, as one thousand farthings make up the
new unit of account, it is the number of thousands which give you the number of such units of account ; while the figure which follows the decimal point represents the number of coins of the value of 2s. Id. (or half-dollars) ; the following figure, the number of twopence-halfpennies (or five-cents); and the third figure, the number of farthings (or half-cents). It would be a very easy system for both Americans and English to learn, and would unite the Anglo-Saxon races in a single money of account, and that a decimal money. No greater boon to.
trade can be imagined. We heartily wish that Mr. Bagehot's admirable booklet may have a greater influence now, twenty- one years after it was first written, than it ever had in his lifetime.
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