Pound sterling

“ See also Sir W. Elliot's Coins of S. India, p. 56.↑ 360 reis is the equivalent in the authorities, so far as I know.↑ Even the pound sterling, since it represented a pound of silver sterlings, has come down to one-third of that value; but if the value of silver goes on dwindling as it has done lately, our pound might yet justify its name again! I have remarked elsewhere: "Everybody seems to be tickled at the notion that the Scotch Pound or Livre was only 20 pence. Nobody finds it funny that the French or Italian Livre or Pound is only 20 halfpence or less!" ”

“ The silver coined in the interval, at 65 shillings in the pound troy, may then be rated at its just value, in proportion to the new pound sterling, and may form a denomination by itself, easily to be distinguished by the stamp. If it should happen to fall into inconvenient fractions, let it be called in, and received at the mint above the rate of other bullion: the loss will not be considerable; and it cannot be expected that any plan can be proposed which is liable to none. ”

“ Practical difficulties would arise from the unwillingness of people to make the changes in thinking and speaking that would be necessitated by new coins, or the altered values of old ones. Of all the schemes proposed in England, that which advocates the retention of the sovereign, or pound sterling, as the unit of value seems to have met with most favour. According to this scheme, the pound would be divided into 10 florins, the florin into 10 cents, and the cent into 10 mils. ”

“ If they provide them themselves from abroad, they must pay the price of them in bills of exchange. But then the lightness of the currency at home, sinks the value of the pound sterling, as it raises the value of the ounce of gold and silver. So the only considerable loss they incur, is in providing the metals, which must ever be considerable, so long as the old guineas remain in circulation. ”

“ The old Saxon pound was the earliest standard of England. It was identical in weight with the old apothecaries’ pound of Germany, and equal to 5,400 of our later Troy grains. The pound sterling was determined from this weight in silver. Henry III., in 1266, decreed the following standards: The sterling, or penny, to weigh equal to thirty-two wheat corns, taken from the middle of the ear; twenty pence, one ounce; twelve ounces, one pound; eight pounds, one gallon of wine, which is the eighth part of a quarter. ”

“ But during the war, owing to the issue of virtually inconvertible money, the pound sterling had depreciated in terms of gold. We must therefore take as our standard a currency which had kept its par with gold. Such a currency was the American dollar, and the exchange quotation on New York is therefore more directly helpful in measuring the gold value of the rupee than is the sterling quotation on London. We can also employ the actual rupee-sterling quotation as a measure by comparing it with the amount of sterling the rupee should have purchased, as an equivalent of 11·30016 grs. ”

“ If the imposition of coinage, therefore, be said to raise the price of English merchandize in foreign markets, it must be allowed that it will not raise the value of the pound sterling at home, by sinking the value of commodities: that is to say, the prices of commodities will adhere to the denominations of the coin; and the coin bearing an advanced value, above what it bore formerly, strangers must pay it. ”

“ The quantity of gold in the English pound is equivalent to $4.8666+ of our gold coins. If the bills offered are about equal to those wanted, a claim to a pound in England will sell for $4.86. If many are wanted, and but few to be had, their price will go up, of course; but it can not go more than a small fraction beyond $4.90, since about 3-1⁄4 cents is sufficient to cover the brokerage, insurance, and freight per pound sterling in a shipment of gold to London. ”

“ To return to the question of limit points: if a universal currency system existed, with the same monetary standard that is used in England, and the coinage kept in a proper condition of weight and fineness, and the coin readily supplied to meet every reasonable claim—if, in fact, the pound sterling were the prevalent coin and the English banking system obtained everywhere, then we should find all exchange quotations as simple as our case of London and Edinburgh, that is to say, all exchanges would be quoted at par or a premium or a discount. ”

“ Sir Robert Peel said that he could not, by any effort of his understanding, attach any other idea to a pound sterling, but “a certain determinate weight of gold bullion.” But that was when gold was every day becoming scarcer and more valuable, and therefore the value of all realised fortunes measured by that pound was daily increasing. Now that it is daily diminishing, we venture to predict that his followers will discover they can attach some other idea to a pound than a certain number of pennyweights of gold. Their ideas will become expansive, and the pound will swell out with them. ”

“ Nations have sometimes, for the same purpose, adulterated the standard of their coin; that is, have mixed a greater quantity of alloy in it. If in the pound weight of our silver coin, for example, instead of eighteen penny-weight, according to the present standard, there were mixed eight ounces of alloy; a pound sterling, or twenty shillings of such coin, would be worth little more than six shillings and eightpence of our present money. ”

“ Both the weight and purity of the coin have been reduced, until its value in the London market*** is not more than 4 shillings 2 pence, the pound currency being consequently reduced to 16 shillings 8 pence sterling and 100 pounds sterling become equivalent to 120 pounds currency, or 480 dollars, the common average rate now given for the 100 pounds sterling bill of exchange in England. ”

“ Few Englishmen could part with the pound sterling without a pang, but surely it need not cost them much sorrow to see the extinction of the pound troy, which is two hundred and forty pennyweights, of the pound avoirdupois, which is two hundred and fifty-six drams, and of the apothecaries’ pound, which is two hundred and eighty-eight scruples. The objection to the metrical system is not absolute, the English are coming to it slowly, it is already legal, and men of science have long since adopted it. ”

“ In England people are continually paying and receiving money in pounds, but few could say exactly what a pound sterling means. No doubt it is represented by a coin called a sovereign, but what is a sovereign? Strictly speaking, a sovereign is a piece of gold coined, in accordance with an Act of Parliament, at a British mint, still bearing the proper stamp of that mint, and weighing not less than 1221⁄2 grains. ”

“ The Boston financiers of the seventeenth century intended to make a coin which should be good bullion, but which should be, as the English pound sterling was forced by law to be, a coin that would stay in the country. ”

“ But there is much more danger that they will succeed in the last, and, by increasing the quantity of gold in a pound sterling in proportion to the fall in its value, succeed in keeping prices at their present low level, notwithstanding all the addition which California and Australia have made to the circulating medium of the globe. ”

“ Owing to the system of finance pursued by our Government, and by every other Government now engaged in the war, of providing for a large part of the country's goods by the mere manufacture of new currency and credit, the buying power of the pound sterling has been greatly depreciated. ”

“ Take the butchers' meat all together, in every season of the year, I believe it is about twopence per pound sterling; the best beef and mutton, lamb and veal are often sold for sixpence per pound of New England money, which is some small matter more than one penny sterling.
"Poultry in their season are exceeding cheap. As good a turkey may be bought for about two shillings sterling as we can buy in London for six or seven, and as fine a [Pg 158] goose for tenpence as would cost three shillings and sixpence or four shillings in London. ”

“ What pretension therefore can any man who is possessed of a salarysalary, an annuity, or of a bond or other security for a sum due to him by another, have to be paid the same number of pounds sterling stipulated at first, when the pound comes to be increased in its intrinsic value 5 per cent. ”

“ All debts of whatever kind, ought to be liable to a fair conversion, as much as those contracted in guilders, florins, livres, &c. when they come to be paid in pounds sterling. The old and the new standards are not the same, because they carry the same denominations of value, any more than a piastre is a pound, because they begin with the same letter. ”

“ But it turned out that all the other Stock Exchange magnates were just as ill-informed as himself with respect to inflation and the Currency Question at large: and they persisted in declaring that a piece of [Pg 273] paper is really none the better for having the words "This is a Pound" written across its face. So the eminent ship-builder returned home disconsolate, and next day instituted proceedings in Chancery against the Holy Roman Empire at Andorra for the recovery of five million pounds sterling. ”

“ To find the equivalent in British standard to a talent of pure silver, which is valued at four hundred and fifty pounds sterling, or five shillings the ounce troy.
The pound troy is 240 pennyweights; and our silver coin has 18 pennyweights of alloy in the pound. From 240 pennyweights take 18, and there will remain 222 pennyweights, the pure silver in the pound. ”

“ Great fellows and great times, thought Stud Brailsford, dipping the hissing shoe into the tub of green water beside the anvil. Men who could carry a three-hundred pound barrel of salt up a steep loft stairs, Big Jock Macreedy who had set the nine-hundred pound oak cornerpost on the lower eighty. ”

“ The real culprit being the dollar, the real remedy is to fix the purchasing power of the dollar. Our dollar is now simply a fixed weight of gold—a unit of weight, masquerading as a unit of value. A twentieth of an ounce of gold [1] is no more truly a unit of value or general purchasing power than is a pound of sugar or a dozen eggs. It is almost as absurd to define a unit of value, or general purchasing power, in terms of weight, as to define a unit of length in terms of weight, to define a yardstick as, let us say, any stick which weighs an ounce. ”

“ The reason why people do not sell the old shillings by the pound, is only because they are not all of the same weight, although they be all of the same value in circulation; but they sell their bullion, as it were, against old worn shillings reduced 585to a mean proportion of value; which sale of bullion is virtually buying old shillings at market by weight. A man, therefore, who can with a pound of silver bullion buy the value of 65 old shillings, will certainly never employ it to buy 62 heavy ones from the mint, which are no where worth more, except in the melting pot. ”

“ But no positive law can oblige a person who sells goods, and who is at liberty to sell or not to sell, as he pleases, to accept of a shilling as equivalent to a guinea in the price of them. Notwithstanding any regulation of this kind, it appeared by the course of exchange with Great Britain, that a hundred pounds sterling was occasionally considered as equivalent, in some of the colonies, to a hundred and thirty pounds, and in others to so great a sum as eleven hundred pounds currency ”

“ A gold-smith can well afford to give 67 pence for an ounce of silver, that is to say, he can afford to give one pound of gold for 14 pounds of silver, and perhaps for less, notwithstanding that what he gives be more than the ordinary proportion between the metals, because he indemnifies himself amply by the price of his workmanship: just as a tavern-keeper will pay any price for a fine fish, because, like the goldsmith, he buys for other people. ”