26 
MONEY 
article, and why should it alone be manufactured for 
nothing ? Why should not people who want coin 
pay for the cost of making it up as well as for the raw 
material, just as they pay for the making of flour 
into bread and the making of white paper into a 
printed book ? Where coinage is gratuitous, it is 
always paid for out of Government revenues, because 
Government is the only agency which will do it for 
nothing. If private enterprise takes up the business 
(a thing not altogether unknown?) it will certainly 
leave the demand for coin unsatisfied till coin is 
enough above the raw material in value to make it 
worth while to manufacture it. The Government 
might act, and sometimes has acted, on the same 
principle, and make the same charge for coining 
that private enterprise might be supposed likely to 
make if under ordinary competition. Further, the 
manufacture is one very strictly monopolized : 
perhaps no other monopoly has ever been protected 
by such draconian penalties as the monopoly of 
coining. What is there to prevent governments 
from charging considerably more than the mere cost 
of coining ? Something was exacted under the name 
of ““ seignorage ”’ by the seigneurs or lords who exer- 
cised the right of coining in mediaeval times, and 
doubtless they would have made the percentage much 
higher if their monopoly had been secure from the 
introduction of foreign coins into their territory. 
Modern governments could probably charge more 
with safety, but have been restrained from making 
heavy charges and sometimes from making any at 
all by the reason naively suggested by the preamble 
of the statute 18 Car. IL. c. 5, which established 
gratuitous coinage in England, “ An Act for the 
Encouragement of Coinage.” This runs: “ Whereas 
1 For a fairly modern example, see Quarterly Journal of 
Economics, August, 1917, pp. 600-634.