W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

38 The Coins of Europe
we should prize our Money of Necessity of every region
and period. We have elsewhere spoken of the excellent
monograph of M. le Colonel Maillet ;
it is wonderful for its
completeness and accuracy, and for the story which it tells
a story of all nations. That it
might be improved, goes
without saying ;
and the process might perhaps be directed
both to the withdrawal of existing matter and the insertion
of the
of new. In one sense and way it may be predicated
from the
entire coinage of the Netherlands, emanating
Hollanders or Brabanters themselves during the transitional
era (1570-90), that it was the product of a whole people in
a state of siege.
XII
The benevolent motives of sovereigns, enunciated on
went hand in hand with their claims to a
their currency,
divine origin and sanction. It seems to have been in the
ninth century that the European ruler sought to add to
the security of his throne by declaring himself to sit there
by the grace of God. The alliance between Church and
State was on a different footing when this pronunziamento,
now a mere formula, was originally introduced ;
nor was it
by any means universal even on the currency of the divinelyborn
House of Hanover. The great aim of the secular and
ecclesiastical authorities was to uphold each other at the
cost of the community and we see how the Christiana
;
Religio and Temple type was favoured by the Prankish
kings, and continued by the emperors. In some of the
Brunswick thalers the D.G. of the legend precedes the
rehearsal of the name and titles, as if it were thought to be
the primary object to catch the eye and arrest the attention.
In an excessively rare daalder of Hermann Theodor
Van Bronkhorst, Heer Van Stein, etc., there is the unusual
motto (for the Low Countries) of Posvi Devm Adjvtorem
qv\etn\ Timcbo.
On the other hand, at the French Revolution in 1792,
the Democratic party crossed over to the opposite side, and