Louis (currency)

“ On the 11th March 1720 the use of the gold specie was forbidden, and a recoinage determined on. These regulations, however, were not carried out, and by July the louis d'or had risen to 60 livres (= 1963 7⁄17 livres to the mark of fine gold) , and the louis d'argent to 15 livres (= 130 10⁄11 livres to the mark of fine silver) . The same enhancement prevailed in the divisional coin, and the confusion endured till the end of 1720. In September the louis d'or had fallen to 45 livres (= 1472 8⁄11 livres to the mark of fine gold) , and the louis d'argent to 11 livres 5 sols. ”

“ At this time eighty nobles besides the King are said to have possessed their own mints. Louis, who knew the feudal coinage was freely debased, forbade its circulation except in the province where it had been minted; while his own money, which was of far higher value, was made current everywhere. Men and women naturally prefer good coins to bad in exchange for merchandise ”

“ Why is there so little coin in England, in proportion to what there is in France? Does any man imagine that this is a mark of poverty? By no means. Let the state proscribe the currency of paper money, the coin will quickly return; because then it will be demanded. But at present the paper supplies its place, and so it goes abroad in order to gain more; whereas in France it remains at home, and produces nothing. The wealth of a nation can no more be estimated by the quantity of its coin, than the wealth of private people by the weight of their purse. ”

“ Public chests full—payments made to the day—orders on the treasury the best bills of exchange—France alone, of all Europe, having no paper money; meaning no government paper money, for there were bank notes of five hundred francs, and one thousand francs. A government revenue of one hundred and sixty millions of dollars was paid in gold and silver; a hard money currency, of five hundred and fifty millions of dollars, saturated all parts of France with specie, and made gold and silver the every day currency of every man, woman and child, in the empire. ”

“ Louisiana suffered a great deal from the want of a circulating medium. Card money had caused the disappearance of the gold and silver circulating in the colony before its emission, and its subsequent depreciation had induced the commissary ordonnateur to have recourse to an issue of ordonances, a kind of bills of credit, which although not a legal tender, from the want of a metallic currency, soon became an object of commerce. They were followed by treasury notes, which being receivable in the discharge of all claims of the treasury, soon got into circulation. ”

“ It is true that in the reign of Louis XII., whose exchequer had been exhausted in the Italian expeditions, gold and silver had become so scarce in France, that the king was obliged to prohibit the manufacture of all sorts of large plate (grosserie) . But the discovery of America having brought with it an abundance of the precious metals, Louis XII. recalled his ordinance in 1510; and thenceforth the corporations of goldsmiths were seen to increase and prosper, as luxuriousness, diffused by the example of the great, descended to the lower ranks of society. ”

“ For states of transition are always states of suffering and, were there two or three hundred millions of silver in the hands of the people to-day, the statesman well might hesitate to raise the standard of the old dollar, making it equivalent to the gold one. The load of silver which France is carrying interferes seriously with her efforts to resume on her paper currency, and yet she very properly hesitates to enter upon an experience similar to that which Germany has recently had ”

“ Then back to San Francisco, where the only memory that remains is that of a confused blur of preparations for leaving—packing, ticket-buying, and melancholy farewells—for the time had come to return to old Scotland to introduce a newly acquired American wife to waiting parents.
One day Louis came in with his pockets full of twenty-dollar gold pieces, with which he had supplied himself for the journey. He thought this piece of money the handsomest coin in the world, and said it made a man feel rich merely to handle it. ”

“ But no sooner does coin leave the mint, than it immediately finds itself on the high-road to the melting pot. During their currency, coins wear away, some more, others less. Name and substance, nominal weight and real weight, begin their process of separation. Coins of the same denomination become different in value, because they are different in weight. The weight of gold fixed upon as the standard of prices, deviates from the weight that serves as the circulating medium, and the latter thereby ceases any longer to be a real equivalent of the commodities whose prices it realises. ”

“ England recovered a gold circulation of about one hundred millions of dollars within four years after the one and two pound notes were suppressed. Our own country filled up with Spanish milled dollars, French crowns, doubloons, half joes, and guineas, as by magic, at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, and the suppression of the continental bills. The business of the United States would not require above sixty or seventy millions of gold and silver for the common currency of the people, and the basis of large bank notes and bills of exchange. ”

“ Pierre is a profitable pursuit provided one's wallet is filled with American coin or bank-notes. Though articles are priced in francs and centimes, the currency of the United States, Canada, Newfoundland, England and Switzerland is accepted, and change is made in any one or all of these. Strangely, very little French money is in circulation, and a bonus of two per cent, is demanded on French gold wherewith to pay customs fees. An American dollar, silver or paper, is worth 108 sous. ”

“ In fact, until the establishment of constitutional government the French people had to depend on popular violence to procure any temporary reform in their currency. Since the Revolution the course of development has been essentially orderly and regular. All through the time of the ancien régime silver was the principal money and the standard, as the use of the word “argent” as a synonym for money shows. Just as England got a gold currency by overvaluing gold, so did France get a silver one by overvaluing silver. ”

“ Many great nobles enjoyed the privilege of keeping a mint and issuing coins. Since this feudal money passed at its full value only in the locality where it was minted, a merchant had to be constantly changing his money, as he went from one fief to another, and always at a loss. Kings and nobles for their own profit would often debase the currency by putting silver into the gold coins and copper into the silver coins. Every debasement, as it left the coins with less pure metal, lowered their purchasing power and so raised prices unexpectedly. ”

“ What Samuel Loyd and his followers did to England, in 1847, became possible for his successors to do to all the gold standard nations, after 1873. When the mints had been closed to silver, the currency being inelastic, the value of money could be manipulated like that of any article limited in quantity, and thus the human race became the subjects of the new aristocracy, which represented the stored energy of mankind. ”

“ On the 31st July 1619 proclamation was issued for a new coinage. The gold angel was reduced in weight from 71 1⁄9 grs. to 64 11⁄15, being equivalent to an increase of an eleventh in its denominational value: and in January 1620, following the convictions of the merchants referred to, the Council busily debated "the erecting an exchange for monies, to prevent the export of silver by the goldsmiths who have been the offenders."
All these steps were taken too late, and the currency crisis which shook Germany ran its full course, too, in England. ”

“ Truly gold is a product of the country, and imports should be paid with surplus produce; but while the credit of the currency, and thus credit generally, is based on gold, that metal cannot be a surplus product, be the aggregate supply what it may. What the people desire of money is not redemption, but constancy of value. Government has declared that the dollar shall be the legal means of payment. ”

“ At present the quantity of coin which is hoarded by private persons is so small that it would, if brought forth, make no perceptible addition to the circulation. But, in the earlier part of the reign of William the Third, all the greatest writers on currency were of opinion that a very considerable mass of gold and silver was hidden in secret drawers and behind wainscots. ”

“ Commerce brought the people and products of new countries face to face. The lines of caste, as sharply defined within the labor world as without, were gradually dimmed or obliterated. The practice of credit and exchange, largely the creation of the persecuted Jews, made easy the interchange of commodities. Saint Louis himself organized industry, and divided the trades into brotherhoods, put under the protection of the saints from the tyranny of the barons and of the feudal system which had weighted all industry. ”

“ Never, indeed, was there a time in which so much gold was employed decoratively as in this age when coined gold was almost unprocurable, and paper money had been put into circulation to supply the lack. It was a saying of Andre-Louis’ that if these people could only have been induced to put the paper on their walls and the gold into their pockets, the finances of the kingdom might soon have been in better case. ”

“ On this occasion I addressed a letter to a noble Lord, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, suggesting what appeared to me the proper remedy for this evil. I proposed that, with a view to the general [Pg 234] reform of the coins of the realm, all the deficient gold coins should in the first place be called in and recoined, and that in future the currency of the gold coin should be regulated by weight as well as by tale, and that the several pieces should not be legal tender if diminished below a certain weight. ”

“ We find at this time that the General Assembly petitioned the King for permission to enhance the value of all the coins imported into the Colony to an extent represented by one-fourth of their face value; in other words, that body desired to obtain authority to rate a coin equal, let us say, to one dollar in our modern currency, at one dollar and a quarter, and having by the mere stroke of the pen given this arbitrary value, to compel all persons to whom it was offered, to receive it under threat of severe punishment. ”

“ An increase of the volume raises the price of commodities.”
James G. Blaine (House, February 7, 1878) : “The destruction of silver as money and establishing gold as the sole unit of value must have a ruinous effect on all forms of property except those investments which yield a fixed return in money. These would gain an unfair advantage over other species of property.”
James A. Garfield (1880) : “Whoever controls the volume of currency is absolute master of the industry and commerce of the country.” ”

“ Why are louis d’ors worth as much as guineas in many foreign countries? It is evident that they are not intrinsically worth so much by 41⁄2 per cent. but they are virtually so in the eyes of money-jobbers; because, being exported from France while coin is fallen low by a wrong balance of their trade, they still retain an advanced value, for this reason, that when sent back, upon a revolution in trade, they are better than bullion, by all the advanced price of the French coin, at a time when their balance becomes favourable ”

“ Indeed, it may be doubted whether the general misery which prevailed in France, desolated by a revolution, but sustained by a moderate inconvertible paper currency, was greater than was felt in the manufacturing cities of Great Britain, saved by the firmness of government and the good sense of the nation from a political convulsion, but withering under the fetters of a contracted currency, and unrestricted admission of foreign produce. ”

“ A large portion of the stock of specie in the French Bank is silver. Silver is a commodity just like tea, or tobacco, which is always purchasable at its fair value in the markets of the world. The means of the Bank Directors are crippled—here they have in hand a stock of silver with which they might tide over their present difficulties, but Louis Napoleon would not for a time permit them to part with a single bar.
It is to be regretted that we have not before us a true balance-sheet of the French Empire. ”

“ But afore you and I deal, p'raps you show where a money is buried.' A stranger then point between a rocks beside him, and say in he's deep voice, 'Dere!' And then down by a colour man, Louis he see into a ground, what seems all full of treasure shining in a moonlight; here awful much gold and dollars, and dere a gold and silver plate, and a t'other place full of di'monds and jewels, bright as stars in a night sky. ”

“ Apparently the stringency which began in France about the end of the reign of Saint Louis, or somewhat later, did not affect England immediately, for prices do not seem to have reached their maximum until after 1290, and Edward I. only reduced the penny, in 1299, from 22.5 grains of silver to 22.25 grains. Thenceforward the decline, though spasmodic, on the whole tended to increase in severity from generation to generation. The long French wars, and the Black Death, produced a profound effect upon the domestic economy of the kingdom under Edward III. ”