THE NEW COINAGE.

THE new coinage, which is the subject of a recent proclamation, has set us thinking of the many interesting things connected with this branch of the public service. Habit is su h an agent of obtuseness, that people now-a-days have no feeling of the magical character of the thing they handle so continually, and, exceps to bewail its scarcity or declaim against its influence, seldom regard it in any but an arithmetical way. But what a piece of con- juration it is, by which a raonth's provisions may be nipped 'twist finger and thumb, and a tour to the Lakes concealed in the palm of the hand ! This is of course better seen in the case of paper money ; as where your " Leviathan of the Stock Ex- change '—as old ROTHSCHILD used to be called—crumples the peace of Europe between his fingers, or has got the salvation of twenty millions of his fellow creatures in his waistcoat-pocket. And yet we don't know but that the hard cash is the more mar- vellous fellow of the two. Everybody knows that a bank-note is positively, a mere memorandum, a thing without intrinsic value; and that the power it confers, however immense, is no other than what a common letter, proceeding from sufficient authority, could in the same manner assign. But a man who has his pockets full of sovereigns, depends on the faith of no con- tracting party for the realization of any corresponding amount of possible wishes in any part of the civilized globe, and in rattling his gold he feels that he has that about him which will bear him harmless through the world by its own proper virtue. It is not beef or coals, indeed, but it is the short for them; and to suppose that it could be stripped of its Protean power of becoming those, or any other objects of desire in this world, is to suppose the possibility of a fundamental change in the principles of society, and of human nature itself.

All value, it is true, is relative and desendent,—which makes the dilemma of the financiers, who want a fixed standard ; for even corn is relative, labour is relative : but whatever circum- stances could render the precious metals precarious, the same would emperil their fluttering substitute so much the more; and the superior charm of the " yellow slaves" is, that there is but one step from them to the enjoyments they represent, whilst paper money, like an ambassador's proxy, is only the re- presentative of a representative. 111.,ney is power in its highest condensation ; it is the subtilized

or quintessential form of power : a thousand pounds under lock and key may be compared to one of those magical giants in a bottle that %t e read about in the Arabian Nights. It is curious, by the way, to remark how many things, with no claim of their own to admiration or to obloquy, come in for either or both, ac- cording as they chance to be bound up more or less intimately with human affairs. Whatever object happens to come frequently in contact with man and his passions, is sure to receive all the supeilluity of their disgrace. Now money is one of those things which have experienced this base usage at his hands. A more beautiful invention cannot be conceived, and is not presented by the social constitution. Yet, because we have chosen to debase it by an alliance with our own knaveries, we have the assurance to revile it, into the bargain, for bearing the bad odour of that so- ciety,—as if a scavenger should pull on a pair of nankeens and abuse them for being muddy. It is in the same spirit that wine is made to bear the sins of the drunkard, and love itself is scouted for the vices of the sensualist. Men cannot stop short at reason- able advantages; they must try all the vicious possibilities of a thing ; like ?offish schoolboys, that will turn their playthings to uses they were not designed for, till of course they destroy them. When money was literally and truly pecunia,—that is to say, the representative of cattle (peeus) and other farm produce,—what feeling could be associated with it in the minds of our pastoral forefathers, but of the most cheerful and gratifying sort ? In the small circle of their rude coins, they read the number of their flocks and herds ; these were their simple credentials, the brief testinsonies of their industry ; in these they found an easy reckoner and a just agent. Yet this simple and beautiful invention be- came that fountain of mischief fromiwhich SOCRATES* was able to derive all the woes'of mankind, and which every succeeding philosopher has emulated him in denouncing as the curse of life. What a pitiful subterfuge this appears! Unable to look their villanous natures in the face. unable to support the burden of their proper shame, men shuffle the bulk of it on to the nearest convenient object ; and they say, for example—not that their de- pravity has outrageously abused an admirable invention, money, but that the said money is a wicked thing which has abused them. It is wonderful what a convenience a figure of speech may be- come—what an electuary to the sore conscience of poor humanity / By such collective figure it is that we say money, when we mean all that appertaineth to money, including the part our own souls may bear in its transactions : having therefore learned from the poets this delicate species of self-reproach—this abuse of our- selves in tertidpersond—we find the ditnensions of our fault there- by so agreeably confused, that at last we forget to be metaphori- cal altogether, and really conceive the object of reprehensionto be money itself, and not our own corrupt natures.

The " vicious possibilities," as we have called them, of money. seem to have been very early discovered, if not exhausted. Amongst these, not the least considerable has generally been forgery; which, formerly one of frightful prevalence and enor- mity in this country, appears latterly to have undergone a reduc- tion very strengthening to the growing conviction iii favour of the abolition of capital punishments. That the Greeks were too inge- nious a people not to be skilful forgers, appears as well front direct testimonies, as from the silent eloquence of the word Tavesawiw—so expressive of the " smashing " trade, meaning to strike false, i. e. to forge. The art and its professors have flou- rished from that time to this, and there has probably been no inter- mission to business. We think a very interesting work might be written on this subject, historical, biographical, and critical ; tracing its progress from the earliest period, and exhibiting the changes effiseted in it by different monetary movements. 1st DORUS, in the 16th book of his curious, rambling, miscellaneous history, gives a poetical rather than a just account of the origin of the art of coin- ing.. According to him, (c. xvii. de Auro,) it was while a forest was on fire in a tract of country rich in gold ore, that the earth poured forth from its burning veins rivers of molten gold, which, running into the plains below, assumed every variety of fantastic shape, according to the natural casts or moulds furnished by the

inequalities of the ground. " Quorum serum splendore capti homines excogitaverunt liquefactas ad omnem formam posse de- duci." 'swoons, however, is more imaginative than exact, and some of his derivations are very questionable. Such, we consider,

in connexion with the same subject, his bringing nunzisma from

Nunia Pompilius! Noma was the first Roman king who coined

money by stamping an image on pieces of metal, together with his name and title. But what of that? The Greeks hadVOf LI01.44 in the

same sense,—a word which they could not have borrowed from

the Romans, (as they confessedly did another financial word, masses, or nummus,) for this reason, that it is a direct formation from vap,,tw, which means to sanction by law ; it is the father of the Latin word, therefore, by the clearest act of registry : and even when POPpeo.40; is allowed to be from the Latin nummus, it must be remembered that this word is itself" Grmco finite orsum," being identical with soscs, law,—the root, as it ought to be, of all.

Coins have one peculiar feature of attraction apart from their ordinary employment, which we ought to allude to in our brief notice of the subject. Perhaps the miser himself, with his poor passion, does not gloat over a collection of old coins with more of intense satisfaction than the antiquary, from another, certainly

more respectable passion; and it should be remembered, that it is not merely as objects of vent ii that they become interesting to this class of investigators, but that history owes half her triumphs to them.

The new coinage is to embrace several novelties. In the first place, we are to have jive-pound pieces. These will be agreeable

handling, we doubt not; our "itching palm" already fancies it

feels the sort of sensation which will be communicated to it when it closes over their handsome proportions. Then come double sovereigns, like Siamese twin kings—fine fat fees for people in

office, and a good " take" for any other sort of people who are clever enough to command them. The scale then descends through all the usual notes and intervals of sovereigns, half-sove-

reigns, crowns, half-crowns, shillings, sixpences, and groats ; the " diapason closing full " in the Queen's Maunday monies,—a

name to be given to certain diminutive forms of silver money,

viz. threepenny, twopenny, and penny pieces. Ministers, how- ever, should have remembered that phraseology and law are very

differently circumstanced, and that while it is easy to make a people accommodate themselves to a new coinage of money, it is no such easy thing to enforce a new coinage of words. We have

no doubt but the Queen's Maunday-money will be very respect- fully pocketed by all her Majesty's grateful subjects; but we have strong doubts of this money being called the Queen's Maunday-money, although the proclamation strictly enjoins,

amongst other things, "that they be so called." Do our acute legislators or does our amiable Queen imagine, that when Styles and Huggins join in a pot of heavy, they will ask for change

for the Queen's Maunday-money We shrewdly suspect it will be "them mundies.'

• Diog Laert.