Money

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1819853969

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-207464

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cannan, Edwin http://d-nb.info/gnd/118666916

Title:: Money

Edition:: 6. ed.

Place of publication:: [London]

Publisher:: King

Year of publication:: 1929

Scope:: XII, 120 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part I. General principles

Collection:: Economics Books

VALUE OF GOLD 0 equal value: if the coin were worth more than an equal weight of uncoined metal, people would be carrying the uncoined to the Mint: if coin were worth less than uncoined, they would be melting the coin down. The fact that the uncoined metal and the coined continue to exist side by side is proof of their being, weight for weight, of equal value. We are not to say that the value of the coin is determined by that of the uncoined metal any more than we are to say that the value of the uncoined metal is deter- mined by that of the coin, but we can say unhesitat- ingly that the two are connected together and must stand at the same level just as much as the water in two cisterns connected by a large pipe. This was the situation, for example, in England from soon after the end of the Napoleonic war till 1914; the unit of account called the * pound,” originally a pound weight of silver, had through various vicissitudes come to be represented by a gold coin called a sovereign made out of 113 grains of pure gold and 10# of negligible alloy ; coinage was free and gratuitous, and coins could be melted or transported anywhere at the will of the owner. What, by an historical survival, was called * a pound ” might have been translated into 113 grains of fine gold in every contract and commercial transaction without producing any sort of dislocation or causing any one to lose or gain. It is true that people con- stantly paid each other “ pounds *’ without passing either shapeless lumps of gold or sovereigns from hand to hand: they paid in bank-notes and they paid in cheques, but any one who got a five-pound banknote (no small~r nctes were ‘llowed in England and Wales) coul” "ea. 3dr+ - Sve sover- eigns for it frcm the vank ‘hai cst “inyone who received a good cheque could dun -ayment of its amount either in sovereigns or 2ank of

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