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

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part I. General principles

Collection:: Economics Books

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.

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