2. A second and much greater difficulty is presented by the confusion of nomenclature. It is often difficult to determine what particular piece is meant by a given name, or, if the identity of the piece can be fixed, its period may still be uncertain. In French numismatic history, for instance, the term florin d'or or denier d'or is used in documents quite generically for the more specific florins d'or à l'agnel, à l'écu, aux fleurs de lis, à la masse, moutons d'or, etc. This quite indeterminate use of the word "florin" (= denier = "piece," or generally, "coin") may possibly explain the crux to be found on pages [3], [9], [301], and [399] of the text (infra), where florins d'or are mentioned in French history more than seventy years before the first authentic minting of the gold florin at Florence.
3. With regard to the figures of the ratios there is great difference and divergence among the various authorities. The declared ratio may be of a double nature—(1) mercantile, as calculated on the purchase price of gold and silver in the open market; (2) legal, as settled by law in the terms prescribed for Mint purchase and issue. The former is comparatively simple, but it is not until a quite recent date, the opening of the eighteenth century, that it is statistically determinable. The table of the commercial
ratio (pp. [157]-[9] infra) is taken from Soetbeer, and was by him calculated on the Hamburg exchange and London market rates. The competing figures of the commercial ratio drawn up by Ingham in his Report to the Senate of the United States (4th May 1830), and by John White, of the same date (see United States Report of the International Monetary Conference of 1878, pp. 583, 647), I regard as comparatively untrustworthy.
With regard to the legal or Mint ratio (see infra, tables, pp. [40], [69]-[70], [157]) there is the greatest discrepancy, and I print the figures with much trepidation and every mental reserve. The differences in the results arrived at by the various authorities are due to the difference in method of calculation, according as the issue price or the purchase price at the Mint is taken (i.e. with or without allowance of seigniorage and remedy), or according as the pure or gross content of the piece is calculated from (i.e. with or without allowance for alloy). As a matter of fact, hardly any two authorities or sets of calculations agree. See, for instance, duplicate sets of figures for Holland in [Appendix 1]. to Schimmel's Geschiedkundig overzicht; or again, compare Soetbeer's figures with those deduced by Köhler in his Grundliche Nachricht; or by Dr. Arnold Luschin, in the Proceedings of the Congrés International de Numismatique, 1880, p. 443; or with those deducible from Le Blanc's tables (infra, [Appendix VI.]). It is to this difference that must be attributed the discrepancy
in the statement of the ratio by the French Mint authorities in 1640 (see text, infra, p. [92] and [note], ibid.). The difficulty of calculating the European Mint ratio at any moment can be judged from the experience and statements of persons so widely apart as Sir Isaac Newton in England, Mirabeau and Calonne in France, and Morris and Hamilton in the United States (see infra, pp. [172]-[3], [229]-[30], and [251]).
With regard to the scope of the present work, it is confined entirely to the history of metallic currency and standard. There is no reference to the paper-money experience of any country, not even America or Austria. Such a subject must form matter for a separate treatment. The account of Austrian money is, therefore, to be found in [Appendix v.], under Germany, and on the effects of the latest Austrian reform (as also of the latest development in India and the United States) no opinion whatever is expressed. I content myself with the simple statement of fact and event.
In appending a list of the authorities used, it is difficult to overcome the feeling of humiliation which has come to me from the contrast of the ephemeral, slight, and unworthy treatment of monetary history to-day, with the grand, solid, scholarly works which the eighteenth century produced. With the exception of Soetbeer's magnificent labours, without which the present work would have been simply impossible as far as the statements of production and relativity of
the precious metals are concerned, and of the similar historic work of M. Ottomar Haupt, the literature of this subject to-day is light and polemic and transitory to a nauseating degree.
GENERAL
Authorities.