32 
MONEY 
is of no importance whatever except in so far as it 
prevents a spiteful debtor from playing an occasional 
“ nasty trick ”’ on his creditor by paying him a large 
sum in these coins.! If they had not been legal 
tender at all under the law of 1816, they would 
have been generally accepted just as much as they 
are. If they had been legal tender for any amount, 
they would not have been tendered for large amounts 
any more than they are: in fact silver is seldom 
tendered for amounts above gs. 113d., which is less 
than a quarter of the legal maximum, and bronze 
is seldom tendered for sums above 53d., which is less 
than half the legal maximum. 
The law of legal tender has nothing to do with 
the value of the silver and the bronze coins. They 
are maintained at the fixed ratios, 20 shillings, and 
so on, to the pound sterling simply by sufficiency 
of demand coupled with adequate limitation of 
supply. When there is a demand for a thing it will 
have a value until the supply becomes great enough 
to reduce its marginal utility to nil : what value it 
will have depends, given the particular elasticity of 
the demand, upon the magnitude of the supply. The 
value of the silver and bronze coins of the United 
Kingdom is kept at the intended ratio because the 
Government, exercising an absolute monopoly of the 
manufacture of the only known convenient media 
of exchange for small transactions, metallic coins, 
supplies them only in the limited quantity appropriate 
to that ratio. 
To make this quite clear we need only consider 
what would have been the result of insufficient 
demand or excessive supply. 
1 But John Leech’s bus conductor who gave the tiresome 
51d lady 4s. 10d. in coppers was quite within his rights. She 
should have tendered 2d.. not asked for change for a five 
shilling piece.