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

fniroduction 5 5
disregard of economic fitness and justice was the conventionmoney.
But this system was apparently limited to Northern
Germany and the Netherlands, where it more or less prevailed
from the thirteenth century. Elsewhere the utmost difficulty
must have been experienced in adjusting values in all monetary
transactions and it was
; only the very restricted intercourse
of communities outside their own local boundaries
down to quite modern times which tended to render such a
complex arrangement tolerable. For it was principally, of
course, where smaller amounts were concerned, that the
obscurity and confusion were likely to arise a far greater
:
uniformity was observed in the gold values and in the
standard of pieces in that metal.
There has always been a certain degree of perplexity
and doubt in respect to a family of foreign coins, which
from their composite formation in a varied degree are
assignable either to the billon or to the copper
series. An
incorrect appropriation is never satisfactory and of the
;
circumstances under which the bulk of these insignificant
pieces appeared, we possess in England such slight knowledge,
that we have little beyond the prima facie evidence to
guide us. Again, the currencies in different districts and
governments diverged and fluctuated in value so much, either
from local conditions or from temporary exigencies, that what
is a silver denomination in one state or at one date, becomes
a plated or copper one in another state or at another time.
Taking two 12-kreutzer pieces of Hesse- Cassel, 1/59,
one is
manifestly plated, while the other presents the aspect
of being copper. But the fact is that, instead of having a
basis of mixed metal, it is a copper coin plated to pass for
silver value. Indistinct traces of the coating remain in the
letters and the edge. Time has uncased it, and we have it
before us as it was struck. It is a sort of nondescript, yet
it is
preferable to those dilapidated relics which so often
present themselves, in the shape of worn billon money, with
nothing but the wretched foundation surviving. The plating
process was an expedient widely adopted by the Germanspeaking
communities from the seventeenth century, but