W. C a r e w H a z l i t t Coinage of the European Continent

50 The Coins of Europe
XVI
The respect for metrology appears to have long remained
everywhere very slight, and it is difficult to comprehend,
even in some of the modern currencies, such as Austria and
Prussia, whether any standard exists, or, if it exists, is
recognised. One of the inconveniences attendant on decentralisation
and an infinite number of petty states was the
total absence during centuries of any uniform basis of calculation
;
within a moderate radius a dozen currencies under
various names and of conflicting weights were in force ; and
this evil the convention -money was introduced to meet
or mitigate. It is
impossible to believe that any settled
principle was known, or at least followed, inasmuch as the
same value is found inscribed on pieces of the most
dissimilar character ;
and whereas it
appears to have been,
toward the end of the eighteenth century, considered expedient
in parts of North Germany to insert the reassuring
phrase " good " by way of denoting that the coins are true
to weight, we see a small flan of copper marked III. Gute
Groschen, of Mecklenburgh-Strelitz, 1793, and one of Brunswick
in silver, about four times as large and about six times
as heavy, current for 16 Gute Groschen, 1820.
The French possessed at an early date two standards,
those of Paris and Tours ;
but the most ancient numismatic
specimens, posterior to the so-called Gaulish money, were
independent of either system, and belong to the Merovingian
and Prankish series. The former are almost exclusively in
gold, the latter almost exclusively
in silver. The Paris
mint, before the Carlovingian era, struck indeed nothing
but pieces in the most precious metal ;
but the Visigoths,
whose territories extended over a considerable portion of
what is now France, had their own silver money in addition
to rudimentary types of the tremissis or triens. The Carlovingian
currency, which commenced with Pepin le Bref, was
in its module German, not French, and when Charlemagne
improved the coinage, and issued deniers and oboles of