marks indicating the different sources of the metal, the word Lima occurs on those of coins of George II. minted from the silver captured either by Lord Anson, in the great Acapulco Galleon, or, as some think, by the Prince Frederic and Duke privateers. Some have an elephant for the silver imported by the African Company. The Roman armour at the shoulder differs from that of his father in having a lion's head for ornament. The large silver pieces have their date and that of the reign on the edge-as "1741, Decimo quarto," &c. &c.

Of the now usual gold coins, the quarter guinea was omitted in this reign.

Up to this time a number of the old hammered coins of James I., Charles I., and Charles II. were still in circulation, and called broad pieces, an appropriate name for the old thin rials and angels. They were now called in and their circulation forbidden by enactment.

The principal gold coins minted were guineas and halfguineas, only a few five-pound and two-pound pieces being struck. The guinea was, by proclamation, in 1737, raised to 22s. 9d., and foreign gold coins passing in this country, principally Portuguese, settled at proportionate rates. The designs of the reverses of the gold coins were changed in this reign, and the old garnished shield, somewhat varied, again adopted in place of the four shields disposed as a cross. The disposition which was thus abandoned on the gold, was, however, continued on the silver coins.

The first coinage of copper halfpence and farthings in this reign was under warrant of Queen Caroline (in 1738), for the time guardian of the realm. There were forty-six halfpence coined out of the pound avoirdupois. Though the false coining of gold or silver had been made high treason, the coining of copper money was only deemed a misdemeanor, and the increased penalty of this reign only made the punishment two years' imprisonment; which slight punishment, in comparison to that respecting gold and silver coins, was perhaps one cause of the great quantity of false copper money now sent in circulation. Birmingham was the chief seat of these illegal mints, though destined afterwards to become the legitimate spot where the whole copper coinage of the country was to be for a time carried on.

Up to this time, however, the copper coinage appears to have been still a temporary expedient only.

No monies were worked in this reign but at the Tower and in the king's German dominions.

The copper coinage of George II. presents no remarkable feature: the halfpenny has still for reverse, Britannia, very like that of the Roman coins, but very stiff, and poor in style,

CHAPTER XXXVI.

FROM GEORGE III. TO VICTORIA.

GEORGE III., 1760 тo 1820. This prince, on succeeding to the throne of his grandfather, did not meddle with the silver coinage, although the currency was scanty in amount, and of decreased value, from excessive weal and filing, which all the precautions of the last reign had not been able effectually to prevent. In 1762 and 1763, a small amount of coin (57917.) was issued, but of what denomination is not stated. In this coinage, and till 1787, one pound of silver of 11 ozs. 2 dwts. fine, to 18 dwts. alloy, was coined into 62 shillings. But Mr. Hawkins supposes it was not from dies of George III., as no coinage (except the Maundy money) was issued with his portrait,* before 1763, when shillings to the amount of 1007.! were struck for distribution to the populace of Dublin, when the Earl of Northumberland became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. A coinage, however, was in contemplation, as evinced by the pattern shilling of 1764. In 1780, a proposal was made, but without success, to take the coinage out of the hands of the sovereign, abolishing the Mint establishment, and vesting the power of coining in the Bank of England. No serious issue of silver money took place, which seems almost

* Very poorly done on the Maundy money, till the issue (or patterns) of 1798, called the wire money, from the delicate lines of the numerals, on which the head is very beautifully executed in low relief.

incredible, till 1787, twenty-seven years after the acces sion of the king, more than the average length of a long reign. In 1772, the bad state of the coinage offered such temptations to forgery, that 11367. was granted over and above the 600l. per year allowed in George II. for prosecuting forgers. The year 1787 was marked by an issue of 55,4597. in shillings and sixpences, the king's bust appearing much in the same modern Roman style as that of his predecessor, but stiff and less bold in execution, though an improvement on the shillings of 1763. These shillings resemble on the reverse, both in type and legend, those of George II., except that in the last-mentioned, the crowns are between the shields, instead of over them. As the silver pieces in circulation in this country at the time were all light, and worn quite smooth, the new issue soon found its way to the melting-pot, being worth considerably more than the coin in circulation. In 1768 sixpences had been issued exactly like the shillings: but all these small batches of new coins soon disappeared, and the currency became gradually more and more scanty and depreciated, without any great effort on the part of the government to remedy the evil.

In 1798, Messrs. Dorrien and Magen endeavoured to remedy the great scarcity of silver money to some extent, by sending a quantity of bullion to the Tower to be coined on their own account, according to the act of Charles II., upon payment of certain dues. But after it was coined, the government of this unfortunate period, destined ever to be obstructive, caused it to be all melted down, on the plea that a coinage could not be lawful without a proclamation; so that this attempt on the part of the public to right the grievance themselves, was rendered unavailing by the government. These shillings, of which a very few specimens escaped the crucible, were, with the exception of the date, exactly like those of 1787.

A small issue of shillings, sixpences, and Maundy money, took place in 1797 and 1798, the heads on which are very much more beautifully executed than those of any other coins of the reign. Some consider them to have been only patterns: they are known among collectors as the wire money, from the very slender numerals on the Maundy

pieces; and in 1797 a very considerable issue of copper coins was made, coined by Messrs. Boulton and Watt.

Inconceivable as it may appear, this state of things was allowed to go on, getting gradually worse and worse, till the year 1803, when it was attempted to patch up the grievance by stamping Spanish dollars,* for circulation, with a mark like that used at Goldsmiths' Hall for the stamping silver plate. In the following year this stamp was changed for a small octagon containing the king's head; and about the same time an arrangement was made with Mr. Boulton, of Soho, near Birmingham, to stamp the entire face of the dollar with a device, by means of machinery, the result of the great inventions in the application of steam power, recently rendered practical by Watt.

It was not till 1816, during the Regency of the Prince of Wales, that it was determined to meet the difficulties of an entirely new coinage. This event was, perhaps, more owing to the activity and energy of Messrs. Boulton and Watt, than to any initiative feeling on the part of the government; those gentlemen had, in the copper coinage confided to them in 1797, proved the efficacy of their vast machinery, and had scientifically considered all the principles upon which the coinage of a great nation ought to be conducted, especially as regards its protection from the clipper and filer, and from the effect of legitimate wear and tear. The first safeguard was obtained by such further improvements in the milling of the edges as rendered manual imitation almost impossible : and the second, the protection of the impress, by preventing it from rubbing against other coins, was to a great extent effected by a rim round the extreme edge being raised somewhat higher than the relief of the device. Many beautiful and successful specimens were produced; and at length, by these facilities, and the arrival of the grievance at an insupportable height, the government was stimulated to meet the difficulty.

Messrs. Boulton and Watt erected machinery in the Tower similar to their own at the Soho, and a new coinage began in earnest. The recent revolution in France had

The ancient Greeks also stamped the coins of another town or state, when they accepted them for public circulation, as described in the early chapters of this work.

worked great changes, not only in politics, but in art, in all Europe; and the new coinage was consequently in a totally different style of design to all previous ones.

The Parisian school, founded by David and his followers, had thrown off the fluttering pomposity of the modern Roman style, and aimed at copying even nature through the artistic medium of the statuesque simplicity of GREEK models; and, however full of exaggeration in itself, the new style led the way to a better and more natural school of art than that which sprung up about the period of Louis XIII., and had been growing feebly worse till the revolution of 1784; even more characterless in England than on the Continent. The dies were executed for the new coinage by Wyon, and, influenced by the general new feeling in art, he abandoned the conventional Roman armour and mantle, and produced a simple laureated bust, founded upon the style of antique models: those of Greece now furnishing the feeling rather than those of Rome, which, in the previous phase of art, had been filtered down to the most insipid conventional mannerism; while the new school, with all its defects, set forward under new and more invigorating influences. The design adopted was a laureated head; the bust undraped; too familiar to require description. The reverse also was changed, and the old disposition of the four shields as a cross finally abandoned. In February, 1817, the issue of the new half-crowns, shillings, and sixpences, took place, and all who recollect that event, can bear witness to the agreeable impression it produced, and the extraordinary beauty the coins appeared to possess, after the flat, bent, and battered bits of silver, of half their nominal value,* that had been so long made to pass current as the coin of the realm. The new coins were, indeed, in mechanical execution, the finest that had ever been issued in Europe, and the artistic merit of the devices was very considerable.

One of the principal defects was a coarse, or perhaps brutal expression in the king's portrait. Crown pieces were soon after issued, having on the reverse a device similar to that of the George noble of Henry VIII., but in the

* The old shillings were about one-quarter, and the sixpences one-third less than their proper value.