Abstract
In June 1816, the British Parliament did something no one had ever done before: it officially introduced a gold standard. Until 1816, ‘money’ in Britain comprised a massively heterogeneous network of varying exchange practices and social conventions. It existed in a variety of forms: bullion, coins, tokens, bills of exchange, promissory notes, government bills, and banknotes. These were exchangeable in a number of different institutions: goldsmiths, shops, country and metropolitan banks, factories, and agencies. Forgery was a crime and a nuisance, but for many people it was also a way to facilitate commerce where sanctioned practices were inaccessible. Money also had social meanings. In early-modern times, money was conceived metaphorically as blood, food, animals, and birds. Money was life. It could also be death: ill-got riches were wounds; excessive debt was a disease. Francis Bacon once remarked that ‘money is dirt’ in both senses of the term, land and muck. Money was a means for people to calculate their social worth. It was a way to distinguish the rich from the poor, men and women, husbands and wives. Money could be given as a gift, received as a token of gratitude, held up as a pledge of honor, and hoarded as a form of rebellion. The ability to create money was a sign of ingenuity; destroying it meant power. Money was a means of escape and a mark of bondage, a charm and a curse, a ticket to ride and a prison sentence.2
For a hundred years the system worked, throughout Europe, with an extraordinary success and facilitated the growth of wealth on an unprecedented scale. To save and to invest became at once the duty and the delight of a large class. The savings were seldom drawn on and, accumulating at compound interest, made possible the material triumphs which we now all take for granted. The morals, the politics, the literature, and the religion of the age joined in a grand conspiracy for the promotion of saving. God and Mammon were reconciled. Peace on earth to men of good means. A rich man could, after all, enter the Kingdom of Heaven — if only he saved. A new harmony sounded from the celestial spheres.1
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Notes
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Dick, A. (2013). Realms of Gold. In: Romanticism and the Gold Standard. Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137292926_1
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