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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;EWC3, post: 3763056, member: 93416&quot;]I humbly suggest that the road to respectful disagreement would be to point out merely that my opinion differs from that of C W Peck, and in some ways R W Julian. As I suggested to Valentinian elsewhere – in maths we may be able to tell people they are just plain wrong – generally regarding historical subjects, one should exercise more restraint.</p><p><br /></p><p>The copper coinage apparently ceased under Ann due to petitions from merchants which seem to be centrally orchestrated. Just the same thing happened when copper coin issue ceased early under George III. But that second incident surely led to huge issues of copper tokens clearly pointing to a shortage of official copper, even R W Julian admits that much.</p><p><br /></p><p>Peck seems to me to be merely repeating the Political party line of c. 1700. Personally I think it always prudent to check what any politician is telling me.</p><p><br /></p><p>For me the real story here is to do with the silver shortage. In 1694 the Bank of England was set up to fund the William’s war effort in France. It offered 8% per annum on deposits (!) and the money poured in, and mostly one presumes in silver. As I understand it the Bank was able to advance a million pounds to William to pay for mercenary troops in continental Europe, and that would mostly, I suspect, be extracted from the circulating silver coinage of England. Meanwhile the East India Company seems to have been spiriting a lot more silver coin out of the country to fund trade in the East. Subsequent runs on the bank were presumably due to people wanting to draw their deposits in silver, or gold, as there is no reason to suppose the Bank of England ever ran out of paper.</p><p><br /></p><p>Thus the large copper issues under William III and later George I and especially II seem to me and others to be an attempt to fill the gap in the coinage created by the export of silver. The merchants who opposed this around 1700 and again in the 1750’s seem to prefer to push much of the population into coinlessness which in the UK is called Trucking, but which resembles what I gather in the US is generally called scrip. Both are not too far distant from what the credit card companies are aiming at today, in my own opinion.</p><p><br /></p><p>Regarding R W Julian – elsewhere he writes</p><p><br /></p><p>“Boulton believed that the copper coinage, in order to keep counterfeiters at bay, ought to contain its full value of copper.”</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.numismaticnews.net/article/boultons-british-copper-1797-1807" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.numismaticnews.net/article/boultons-british-copper-1797-1807" rel="nofollow">https://www.numismaticnews.net/article/boultons-british-copper-1797-1807</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Well if that is true then it seems to me Boulton would be a hypocrite, since as I recall his 1797 penny weighed a full ounce, but at a time when a full ounce of copper cost about 0.7 of a penny.</p><p><br /></p><p>If anyone wishes to read further into this subject I recommend an old book by an American in exile, Alexander del Mar: “A History of Monetary Crimes”</p><p><br /></p><p>For a fuller account of my own position see this</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.academia.edu/33034920/Maria_Graham_and_the_Problem_of_Small_Change" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.academia.edu/33034920/Maria_Graham_and_the_Problem_of_Small_Change" rel="nofollow">https://www.academia.edu/33034920/Maria_Graham_and_the_Problem_of_Small_Change</a></p><p><br /></p><p>(From NC 2017)</p><p><br /></p><p>Rob T[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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