AUSTRALIAN COINS AND THE MONETARY CONFERENCE.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 1, Issue 42, 14 October 1867, Page 256

AUSTRALIAN COINS AND THE MONETARY CONFERENCE.

The following communication, appears ,in the Times of the 28th June: —■ TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,-r-The hesitation of tradespeople to receieve the half-sovereign of the Sydney Mint in exchange for:their commodities may be more easily justified than your correspondent “Fairplay ” supposes. We may take for "granted that the allowance said to'have been demanded of two shillings upon each half-sovereign is a mistake, and would have been more correctly stated as two pence. A severeign from the Mint at Tower-hill, of which, the Mint at Sydney is a branch, professes to contain 123’27d) grains, or, for convenience, let us say grains of. standard gold; two halfsovereigns the same, When such coins in consequence of Mr or unMr attrition, are deprived of more than three-quarters of a grain of the original weight they cease to be a legal tender. As a sovereign coptains, in round numbers, 120 grains, and as the pound sterling is divisible into 240 pence, it is obvious that each grain of standard gold is tantamount to twopence. If, then, a tradesman, either on trial or suspicion, finds reason to anticipate a loss by the conversion of gold coins into pounds sterling, he is surely entitled to indemnify himself, and he doee so in one of two ways—either he exalts the pricn of his commodity, or he demands a discount is accepting the coin by which he is paid for it. The policy which sanctioned the infusion of the coins of a colonial mint into the monetary system of such a country as Great Britain is doubtful at the best. Two mints at remote points, or what is the same, the parent mint and its branch, are continuously issuing the same species of coin in competition. If the colony issues too many coins for its local wants, the surplus number come to London, not as bullion, which would be harmless, but as coins, which is most mischievous, apart from the possibility of their being short of weight by antecedent use. It seems to be too little understood, both by the Legislature and by the people, that the measure and likewise the unit of value in this country is not the sovereign, but the pound sterling, and this is the reason why our monetary system is superior to all others. The pound sterling contains the invariable quantity of 113-001 grains of pure gold. Let anybody take a £IOOO note to the Bank of England and he will receive a thousand times that said quantity of gold, which is a very different thing from 1000 current weight sovereigns. Every hill of exchange upon London, the dividends and the principal of the National Debt, home and foreign obligations, public and private, of endless variety, are all expressed in the immutable pound sterling, the only standard of value known hitherto to Great Britain. Coins, take what pains you may, cannot, from their nature, be a true standard, and the proximity thereto, in obedience to the general- law of markets, can only be preserved by the best legal expedients for keeping up the quality of the coins and keeping down the numbers; thus, by keeping down the number of copper coins we make a farthing of intrinsie value do the duty of a penny. By keeping down the number of silver coins we make 18s. of intrinsic value do the duty of 205., and by keeping down the number of gold coins we make about 99 sovereigns do the duty of £IOO sterling. This exposition in a small matter may perhaps suggest a thought or two on the much larger and more serious project now afloat of an international coinage. Only a few days ago your columns made ns acquainted with a Monetary Conference about to assemble at Paris, at which Mr Wilson, of the Treasury/and Mr Graham, of the Royal Mint, are to attend to watch proceedings. According to the Frenoh newspapers, the proposal is that our sovereigns, five of which are equal to 126 f., should be clipped dowu to the parity of 125 f. The single sovereign would then be declared legal tender in France for 25f., iu place of 25f. 20c,; aud the napoleon would be deolared legal tender in England for 165., in place of 15s. 9d. or 15s. 10d., which, is its present value. By these means two ends are sought to be attained —one is the convenience of travellers, the other is the nearer approach to a decimal system of computation. And is it for snch small and doubtful advantages that the monetary system of Great Britain is to be revolutionised? Is the ancient and well-under-stood pound sterling to be relinquished, and are coins of new - denominations to be substituted ? Are all the relations between debtor, and creditor, all salaries and wages, to he calculated anew; the arithmetic of lifelong habit, the only arithmetic of the labouring’man, is that to go for nothing P‘ Why, the number of these labouring men are millions, where the number- of travellers are hundreds. And. again, all the coins of France and England put together do not amount to three hundred millions of English money, whereas the obligations expressed in the pound sterling which are held all the world over, and would he deranged, or invaded, or subverted by the : proposed change, must amount to many thousands of millions,

M. Chevalier, who is no mean authority in a topic , of this kind, has, in a letter to the Economists' Francais, signified his opinion adversely to the proposal, which he pronounces to be unreasonable, on the ground that the French gold piece has no merit over others, and ouglit to be abandoned by France in favour of one of a different size, instead of asking other countries to accept it into their system, . ;If, M. Chevalier condemns the proposal for its unreasonableness on the ground that the gold coin of France; whioh is the type offered for adoption, is unsuitable to France, more rightly may, we condemn. it, albeit on, different grounds, for its unsuitableness tQ .us, Our contention is that, let the coins he ever so good, it is impolitic, in the highest degree to; admit/tnem; into our system,, because, our system isFuilt not-on the basis of coins, but on that of the Mvarpng, invariable pound sterling, to. which 1 our own. coins throughout play only a subordinate part. if, therefore, any oountry, for its own wants, should over coin, or like,’ for example, Russia, or the United States, or, Italy, should, lapse info paper money, the coma thereby rendered excessive for its ’ own* circulation would he- liable to 'be fused into ours, and so.destroy the limitation ;.by ; ■ yi-hieh- our coins are kept up to parity with our sterling. The coins of the ,Ausi traliun: colonies haring Legislatures of their owr are open to the same objection, / ,/ /// , June 27,