CHAPTER IX. Statement and Criticism of the Old Doctrines.

sovereign power vested in the hands of a monarch possessed of unlimited authority, who has a direct personal interest in the profit to be made from the degradation of the coinage, and who has power sufficient to enable him to force his debased coinage on a reluctant people. Did such conditions exist in any of the Greek states of antiquity? Nowhere in Greece Proper do we find them fulfilled, but if we turn to Sicily we get a good example of the practice so often followed in after centuries by the mediaeval monarchs. The tyrant Dionysius there put an arbitrary value on gold in relation to silver: for although this relation was probably not more than 12:1, this despot raised it perforce to 15:1³⁰. He also issued a coinage of tin, according to Aristotle³¹, which he perhaps forced his subjects to take as equivalent to silver coins of like size. In later years again when Timoleon liberated Syracuse and the democracy was once more restored, the state issued a coinage of electrum instead of that of pure gold, which had previously been in currency, by this means making a profit of 20 per cent.³² It is hardly necessary to point out that whilst this coinage of Dionysius might pass for an artificial value within the dominions of Syracuse, the moment a Syracusan came to make payment to a foreign merchant, its factitious value vanished and the transaction took place according to the current value of the metals. So as long as the English penny remained of good weight and quality it found ready currency on the continent, and the potentates of Flanders issued numerous imitations of them known as esterlings, but when the English silver penny became debased all foreign imitations ceased³³. Now the Greek states of Greece Proper were very small in extent, and seldom had a very strong central authority. The area being limited it was absolutely necessary for them to have constant dealings with their neighbours. It would have been difficult for any government in republican times to have forced on its citizens a debased silver currency, and even had this been possible, any benefit derived therefrom would have been counterbalanced by the great drawback arising to trade. If Athens had reduced her famous “Owls” or as they were otherwise called “Maidens” (from the