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«
