Names of coins, and of integral sums of money, taken chiefly from weights.

The degrees of fineness of both silver and gold, are discoverable, by skilful assay-masters, to great exactness; and these metals, being universally of equal goodness, according to their purity, they are proper materials of money. And indeed, they have manifestly a peculiar fitness for that purpose, above any other material hitherto known; and accordingly, these metals only are used as such, by all the polite and trading nations of the world.

As the intrinsic qualities, or degrees of fineness of given masses of silver and gold, are not discoverable without art, trouble and expence; the expediency of coining was soon discovered. The public stamp upon coins, is a voucher and security to every one, that the coins that wear it, are of a certain fineness, and intrinsic value, according to their size or weight: And coins also, being more distributive than bullion, are, upon that account likewise, more convenient for trade, and in the common affairs of life.

In antient times, the names of given sums of money, do not seem to have been properly the names of any species of coin, but of different proportions of weight: As the talent, shekle, mina, drachma, &c. and in later times, pound, mark, &c. The mark is now disused by us; but in several of the neighbouring countries, it is still their integer for weighing metals, and is subdivided into eight ounces. And when the art of coining became established, the coins took their names from certain weights, used in the respective countries; to which weights, the coins at first exactly corresponded. The integral sums of money, were also denominated, from integral weights; as the livre in France, and the pound in England and Scotland: and so many of the coins as made the sum of one pound, or a money pound, made also exactly a pound in weight. At present, we have only the names pound and penny, that are common both to money and weights: Antiently a shilling was here the name of a given weight; and 240 pennies made the sum, as at present, of one pound, and a pound weight. But now, a silver penny is only the 10/31 of a penny-weight Troy; which is a little more, than a third of what a penny weighed at the conquest.