La question d'Orient depuis ses origines jusqu' à nos jours

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 836084659

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28892

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Ricardo, David

Title:: Oeuvres complètes

Place of publication:: Paris

Publisher:: Guillaumin

Year of publication:: 1847

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLVIII, 752 S)

Collection:: Economics Books

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THE NOTION OF MONEY 19 gold and silver ata rate varying, not only from one country to another, but subject to constant variation! in a single country, then proceeded to apply to the currencies which it issued an arbitrary scale which was frequently changed. For instance, a gold louis, of which the content in fine metal might have been bought for 18 or 19 livres, was succes- sively scaled at 20 to 24 livres. As the purchasing price and the scaling varied from one country to another and from one time to another both for gold and silver, the holders of gold or silver bullion often refused to bring it to the Royal Mint for export abroad and sometimes even found it profitable to melt down gold and silver coins for trans- mission to foreign mints. The purchase price and scales were constantly stultified by what was called the “com- mercial” value of the metals. Monetary policy before the Revolution was a perpetual struggle to obtain one or other of these evasive metals, which, owing to the con- stant and contradictory changes, both in the scaling and in the rates, avoided the Royal Mints or passed through them only to be again melted down and exported. It is therefore not surprising that after many centuries of this kind of experience, the public authorities, who had always come off worst, admitted that they were beaten and gave up attempting to fix the purchasing price and the arbitrary scales and confined themselves to accepting the metals and restoring them after coinage. But it should be pointed out that the so-called commercial rate over which the public authorities had no hold was mainly if not essentially the result of variations in the purchasing prices given by the different mints. It reflected the advantages which might exist at any given moment in bringing one or other metal to this or that mint in preference to others. For the frequent and wide variations in the ratio of gold to silver due to their respective purchasing prices by the different mints and even differences between the purchas- ing price and the scale of a single metal as between one country and another gave rise to profitable arbitration. But since the 19th century civilised states, in which a given 1 Even several times in a few months. 16«

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