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Of all the English coins, the first appearance of which occasioned popular anger, none had a worse reception than the two-shilling piece which appeared in 1849. “This piece,” says Miss G.B. Rawlings in Coins and How to Know Them, a book rich in information, “was unfavourably received, owing to the omission of ‘Dei Gratia’ after the Queen’s name, and was stigmatised as the godless or graceless florin.” The florin, however, so called after a Florentine coin, had come to stay, but since 1851 it has been as godly in inscription as any of the other money in one’s pocket. The coin has survived, but hardly the name. One can with an effort call a spade a spade, but who would think of calling a florin a florin? The coin itself for a time bore the inscription: “One Florin, Two Shillings,” as though the name called for translation. Since the introduction of the florin, there have been many coins that aroused popular hatred. The four-shilling piece, especially, that was struck in the year of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, was received with a howl of execration. Men went about in constant dread of argument with shopkeepers as to whether they had given them a four-shilling or a five-shilling piece. In the interests of the national good temper the coin ceased to be struck after 1890 Englishmen, however, disliked the entire Jubilee coinage. They disliked the Queen’s portrait, and they disliked especially a sixpence which could be easily gilded to look like a half-sovereign. The sixpences were hurriedly withdrawn, but schoolboys continued to treasure them in the belief that they were worth fabulous sums. Like groats, the delight of one’s childhood, they began to be desirable as soon as they ceased to be common. When King Edward VII. came to the throne, there was another outburst of hatred of new money. The chief objection to it was that the King’s effigy had been designed by a German and had not even been designed well. It was at this time, perhaps, when people began to hate the money in their pockets, that the reign of modern extravagance began. To get rid of a sovereign bearing a design by Herr Fuchs seemed a patriotic duty. Thrift and pro-Germanism were indistinguishable.

Much as men detest new sorts of money in their own country, however, many of us take a childish pleasure on our first arrival in France in handling strange and unfamiliar coins. One of the great pleasures of travel is changing one’s money. There is a certain lavishness about the coinage of the Continent that appeals to our curiosity. Even in getting a five-franc piece we never know whether it will bear the emblem of a republic, a kingdom or an empire. Coins of Greece and Italy jingle in our pocket with those of the impostor, Louis Napoleon, and those of the wicked Leopold, King of the Belgians. In Switzerland I remember even getting a Cretan coin, which I was humiliated by being unable to pass at a post office. The postal official took down a huge diagram containing pictures of all the European coins he was allowed to accept. He studied Greek coins and, for all I know, Jugo-Slav coins, but nowhere could he find the image of the coin I had proffered him. Crete for him did not exist. He shook his head solemnly and handed the coin back. Is there any situation in which a man feels guiltier than when his money is thrust back on him as of no value? This happens oftener, perhaps, in France than in any other country. France has the reputation of being the country of bad money. The reputation is, I believe, exaggerated, though I have known a Boulogne tram conductor to refuse even a 50-centime piece as bad. I remember vividly a warning given to me on this subject during my first visit to France. I was sitting with a friend in an estaminet in a small village in the north of France, when an English chauffeur insinuated himself into the conversation. He was eager to give us advice about France and the French. “I like the French,” he said, “but you can’t trust them. Look out for bad money. They’re terrors for bad money. I’d have been done oftener myself, only that luckily I married a Frenchwoman. She’s in the ticket office at the Maison des Delits–you probably know the name–it’s a dancing-hall in Montmartre. Any time I get a bad 5 franc piece, I pass it on to her, and she gets rid of it in the change to some Froggie. My God, they are dishonest! I wouldn’t say a word against the French, but just that one thing. They’re dishonest–damned dishonest.” He sat back on the bench, a figure of insular rectitude but of cosmopolitan broadmindedness. Is it not the perfect compromise?