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Financier and the Finances of the American Revolution
Financier and the Finances of the American Revolution Author:William Graham Sumner Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XVIII. EXCHANGE, MINT, AND COINAGE. /NE great cause of perplexity in studying the financial operations of the period of the Revolution arises from... more » the changes which took place in the currency of different countries. This affected particularly the foreign exchanges; and as the relations between the United States and France were very important for the finances of the period, the rates and quotations of exchange often have great significance. The exchange between the United States and France was very complicated. The dollar was a Spanish coin. It was used by the Americans as the metallic unit, while they had a money of account in pounds, shillings, and pence. In France the dollar needed to be converted into livres and sous. The money of account in the different colonies did not rate the dollar at the same number of shillings and pence. Moreover, the old relations with England had established a habit, which was only partially suspended during the war, of regarding the relation between the dollar and sterling money as the one which was of the most interest and importance to the colonies. In this period the English currency actually went over from silver to gold. The Spanish dollar underwent a deterioration by fraud or bad workmanship in the mint, and the American currencies underwent depreciation by excessive paper issues. All these elements entered into thequotation of the exchange. Even the merchants who were using the quotations do not seem to have understood them. They used them by habit and tradition, and by empirical rules. They were, however, perplexed and tormented by them when new elements entered in, which required variation in the customary rules. We therefore find that the leading public men, and Morris perhaps first of all, early turned their attention...« less
ISBN-13: 9780678004357 ISBN-10: 0678004358 Pages:652 Edition:New issue of 1891 ed Rating: