similar schemes which were proposed in the early years of the French Revolution. The premium on the minting of gold drew it to France, in preference to any other place where a simple market price prevailed. And the 20-franc gold pieces of France overflowed, while the German crowns could not struggle into existence. Page 213
The attempt which was made by a commercial conference at Hamburg, at the time of the meeting of the Vienna Conference, to secure the introduction by the Hamburg Bank of a gold instead of a silver valuta, remained equally ineffectual.
As far as concerns the establishment of a simple and single monetary system for Germany was concerned, this Vienna Convention, the last great convention which Germany saw previous to the reconstruction of her system in 1871, was as futile as that of Dresden in 1838, or as all the conventions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries previously.
The consciousness of the need of such simplification and unification, however, became thereby only the more apparent. Four years later the first German Handelstag, which met in May 1861 at Heidelberg, turned its first and special attention to the erection of some common currency system. The recommendation which it finally concluded upon was the adoption of the Drittelthaler as the unit mark, with a decimal subdivision. Four years later the third Handelstag, which met at Frankfort (September 1865), confirmed the resolution, with the additional proposition of the minting of a gold piece identical with the 20-franc piece, the value of which should be regulated from time to time; the scheme being, therefore,