£0
MONEY
“DEI GRA: BRITT: OMN: REX FID: DEF: IND:
IMP : ” round .the King’s head on our coins. Pro-
vided the paper will be taken for the amount printed
conspicuously on its face, wherever we are likely to
offer it, we do not trouble ourselves whether, like a
bank-note, it carries the promise of some person or
institution to pay that sum at a particular place on
demand (scl. in business hours), or, like a currency
note, says that it is legal tender (i.e. that we can
compel any one to whom we owe the sum to choose
between accepting the paper in discharge of the debt
and going without payment altogether).
How such “ notes ” first got into circulation along
with coins in various countries and at different
times is an interesting historical question well worth
studying. But the answer is lengthy and not material
to our present purpose. It will suffice to suggest a
few of the reasons why a demand arose for such a
currency. Sometimes the demand arose from the
bad state of the coinage. When base coin was
common and originally good coins were liable to be
much clipped without immediately being rejected by
the next person to whom they were offered, and when
all sorts of good and bad foreign coins found their way
into each country, the inexpert person never knew
what he would actually get if he accepted say £50 or
£100 tendered to him by a buyer or a debtor, and
even an expert would take some time examining,
weighing, and perhaps assaying some of the coins.
What more natural in such circumstances than that
a person, having once got a quantity of coin, should
hand it over to some expert man or institution with
a reputation for honesty to be examined and certified
as amounting to a certain sum? And then what
more natural than that having got the certificate
he should use it instead of the coin itself to make his
next big payment with? Instead of offering a