The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864

The coins of Constantine the Great, 306 A.D., will always remain of peculiar interest, as connected with the early history of Christianity. Constantine, after forcing his brother-in-law, Licinius, from his Eastern dominions, built Constantinople, and made Christianity the state religion. The principal emblem upon his coins is the Labarum, or sacred banner, bearing the monogram of Christ—the letters Χ and Ρ—being the initials of ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ, the angles of which are occupied by the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha and Omega, in allusion to Christ's declaration in Revelation. A rarer type of Constantine's coins has the monogram, and the legend, In hoc signo vinces. The signum was the vision of a beautiful cross in the heavens, which was presented to the view of Constantine, near Milan, during his march against Maxentius. To this cross he attributed both his victory and conversion. These Christian emblems remained upon the coins of his successors until the reign of Julian the Apostate, who removed them and substituted pagan emblems. Nor do they again appear until the accession of Michael Rhangabe (811-813), when the bust and sometimes the full length of Christ is on the obverse, with the nimbus, and the legend, Jesus Christus nica(tor) rex regnantium. Upon the reverse, the emperor, with a singular degree of boldness, is seated by the side of the Virgin, the two holding aloft the banner of the cross.

We come to more modern coins. England and Ireland were in continual trouble about the standard of coinage. On the accession of Mary, she declared the intention of restoring the old standard of silver coinage, viz., 11 oz. 2 dwt. fine, to 18 dwt. alloy; but, instead of that, the new coinage was a pennyweight lower than that of Edward. Nor did it mend matters that her handsome face and Philip's were on the obverse. The wits of the day had many a joke over it; and Butler's sarcastic pen could not omit the opportunity of writing:

'Still amorous, fond, and billing,Like Philip and Mary upon a shilling.'

The first manifestation of displeasure between the mother country and the colonies was with Massachusetts, of course. The old Bay State was as impatient toward masters then as later in the Revolution against George, and still later with the slaveholders. Charles II. was displeased with the colonists for coining money, which he considered his royal prerogative, and intimated to Sir Thomas Temple that they must be punished, and the business stopped. Sir Thomas was considerable of a wag, and showed the king one of honest John Hull's shillings, on the reverse of which was the pine tree. The king asked him what sort of a tree that was. Upon which Sir Thomas replied that, of course, it was the royal oak, which had saved his majesty's life. The king smiled at the courtier's wit; but it is not reported that he allowed Hull to continue the coinage.

The proverbial misfortunes of Ireland have attended even her coinage, and her troubles in that direction commenced as early as the reign of Henry VII. He coined sixpences for Ireland worth only fourpence in England. Mary issued base shillings and groats for Ireland, and Elizabeth issued still baser ones, while she purified the coinage of England. James I. struck copper farthings of two sizes, that if they failed in England, they might be used in Ireland for pence and halfpence. Charles I. established a mint in Dublin, but, in the confusion attendant upon his death, the Irish lost it. Cromwell gave them tokens in place of coins of the realm; and James II. base silver money, made principally from brass cannon, and even this alloyed stuff was gradually diminished in size. White metal followed, then lead, and finally tin. George I. granted a patent to William Wood in 1737 for coining pence and halfpence for Ireland, but he coined them of smaller size than was stipulated in the patent. Dean Swift, with his merciless satire, drove them out of Ireland, and his majesty, having no use for them in England, sent them to his American colonies. Circulating media were scarce here at that time, and anything in the shape of coins was welcome. George II. did better for Ireland, and gave her honest coins. In 1760 the famous voce populi halfpenny appeared, a company of gentlemen in Dublin having obtained permission to issue them. There was a bit of quiet revenge in this halfpenny. The head of the sovereign, though apparently done in the usual manner of the king's portrait, was in reality a portrait of the Pretender. The coins attained a considerable circulation before the trick was discovered, and then they were suppressed.

Coins have figured in sermons. Bishop Latimer, on the 8th of March, 1549, delivered the following sarcastic sermon. On a previous occasion he had spoken jestingly of the new currency of Edward VI. For this he was accused of sedition, which charge he answered thus:

'Thus they burdened me even with sedition. And wot ye what? I chanced in my last sermon to speak a merry word of a new shilling, to refresh my auditory, how I was like to put away my new shilling for an old groat. I was therein noted to speak seditiously. … I have now gotten one more fellowe, a companion of sedition; and wot you who is my fellowe? Esay (Isaiah) the prophet. I spake but of a little prettie shilling; but he speaketh to Jerusalem after another sort, and was so bold as to meddle with their coynes. 'Thou proud, thou haughty city of Jerusalem. Argentum tuum versum est in scoriam;' thy silver is turned into what? into testious scoriam, into dross,' Ah! seditious wretch! what had he to do with the mint? Why should he not have left that matter to some masters of policy to reprove? Thy silver is dross; it is not fine; it is counterfeit; thy silver is turned; thou hadst no silver. What pertained that to Esay? Marry, he replied a piece of diversity in that policy; he threateneth God's vengeance for it.

'He went to the root of the matter, which was covetousness, which became him to reprove; or else that it tended to the hurt of poore people; for the naughtiness of the silver was the occasion of dearth of all things in the realm. He imputeth it to them as a crime. He may be called a master of sedition indeed. Was not this a seditious fellowe, to tell them this even to their faces?'

The three-farthing piece struck in Elizabeth's reign is often mentioned in the poets. Shakspeare has an allusion to it in King John. He introduces the bastard Falconbridge, ridiculing the personal appearance of his legitimate elder brother, having just before compared him to a half-faced groat:

'Because he hath an half face, like my father,With that half face would he have all my land.'

Farther on, he says he would not have such a person (body):

'My face so thin,That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose,Lest men should say, Look where three farthings goes;'

alluding to the rose which was on both the obverse and reverse of the coin. Beaumont and Fletcher, in the 'Scornful Lady,' show the difference between the penny and three-farthing piece, and inform us of a knavish trick then practised, to impose upon ignorant people the lesser as the greater coin. Lovelass, speaking of Morecraft, the usurer, says: 'He had a bastard, his own toward issue, whipt and thin cropt, for washing out the rose in three farthings to make them pence.'

In England, during the reign of George III., an act was passed to amend an act of the 51st of the king, respecting the gold coin and the notes of the Bank of England. By this act the provisions of the former statute were extended to Ireland, and the notes of the bank there were placed upon the same basis as those of the Bank of England. While this act was passing the House, the following epigram appeared in the public papers:

BANK NOTES AND GUINEAS

Bank notes, it is said, once guineas defiedTo swim to a point in trade's foaming tide;But ere they could reach the opposite brink,Bank notes cried to gold: 'Help us, cash us, we sink!''That paper should sink, and guineas should swim,May appear to some folks a ridiculous whim;But before they condemn, let them hear this suggestion:In pun making, gravity's out of the question.

There is a romantic incident in the early history of Massachusetts, which has been often told. Money was scarce, and in 1652 the General Court passed a law for the coinage of sixpences and shillings. Captain John Hull was appointed the mintmaster, and was to have one shilling in every twenty for his labor. All the old silver in the colony, wornout plate, battered tankards, buckles, and spoons, and especially the bullion seized by the buccaneers then sailing the Spanish Main (for all was honest that came to Hull's melting pot), was brought in for coinage, and the mintmaster rapidly grew to be the millionnaire of the colony, and suitors came from far and wide for the hand of his daughter. Among them was Samuel Sewall, who was the favorite of the plump and buxom miss. Hull, the mintmaster, roughly gave his consent: "Take her," said he, "and you will find her a heavy burden enough." The wedding day came, and the captain, tightly buttoned up with shillings and sixpences, sat in his grandfather's chair, till the ceremony was concluded. Then he ordered his servants to bring in a huge pair of scales. 'Daughter,' said the mintmaster, 'go into one side of the scales.' Mrs. Sewall obeyed, and then the mintmaster had his strongbox brought in, an immense ironbound oaken chest, which the servants were obliged to drag over the floor. Then the mintmaster unlocked the chest, and ordered the servants to fill the other side of the scales with shillings and sixpences. Plump Mrs. Sewall bore down hard upon her side of the scales, but still the servants shovelled in the bright, fresh pine-tree shillings, until Mrs. Sewall began to rise. Then the mintmaster ordered them to forbear. 'There, you Sewall,' said the magnanimous old money maker, 'take these shillings for my daughter's portion. Use her kindly, and thank Heaven for her; for it is not every wife that is worth her weight in silver.' And Master Sewell took Mistress Sewall and thirty thousand pounds (not avoirdupois, but sterling).

The liberty cap was first used as an emblem by the committee of safety organized at Philadelphia early in 1775. At a meeting on the 31st of August of that year, it was resolved by the committee that Owen Biddle provide a seal for the use of the board, about the size of a dollar, with a cap of liberty, with this motto: 'This is my right, and I will defend it.' Upon the first cent issued by the United States Mint for circulation, in 1793, the cap appears. This cap is the Phrygian cap, and all nations recognize it as the badge of liberty. When Spartacus rose at the head of his fellow slaves against their Roman masters to obtain liberty, his followers were distinguished by this cap. Though their effort was unsuccessful, the principle of liberty still exists, to be fought for until the last manacle is struck from the last slave. And mankind has recognized that early struggle for freedom by adopting the cap as one of the attributes of the goddess of freedom.

The freaks of currency are singular. The early Greeks bartered with cattle; hence we derive pecunia (money) from pecus (the flock). Cowry shells have bought slaves on the African coast, and wampum answered for money with the Indian, The Carthaginians, Frederick II. at the siege of Milan, Philip I. and John the Good, kings of France, used stamped leather, the latter inserting a silver nail in the centre. St. Louis, of France, issued the black coin made of billon. The Anglo-Saxons used rings, torques, and bracelets. Homer says the Greeks carried on their traffic with bars and spikes of brass. Salt is the money of Abyssinia, and codfish in Iceland. In Adam Smith's day, the Edinburgh workmen bought bread with nails, and drank from foaming tankards paid for with spikes. Marco Polo found mulberry-bark money in China, stamped with the sovereign's seal, which it was death to counterfeit, as was the case also with the Continental currency of our own country. The first families of Virginia, now fighting for the ideas of aristocracy and labor owned by capital, are the lineal and quite recent descendants of shiploads of women exported from the crowded capitals of Europe, with little regard to character or condition, and bought at so many pounds of tobacco per head. The cannon used by James II. in his desperate struggle for the throne, were melted up and coined into the famous gun money; and the bells of Paris which tolled over the horrors of the guillotine, in the bloody days of Robespierre, met a similar useful end. Charles I., with a Vandal hand, melted up the plate of the aristocracy and the almost inestimable relics of Oxford into siege pieces. In 1641, Massachusetts enacted that wheat should be received in payment of debts; and during the French Revolution, the convention, upon the motion of Jean Bon Saint André, discussed the propriety of making wheat the standard of value.

From coins to wealth is but a step. The ancients surpassed the moderns in splendid wealth and lavish extravagance. Seneca, writing superb treatises in favor of poverty, was worth nearly five millions of dollars. Lentulus, the astrologer, made his black arts yield him over three millions. The delighted heirs of Tiberius found nearly thirty-six millions in his coffers, and in less than a year Caligula spent the whole of it. Milo's debts were Titanic, amounting to six millions. Cæsar had a list of creditors whose name was legion, before he obtained any public office; but he was soon enabled to present Curio with six hundred thousand dollars, Lucius Paulus with four hundred thousand, and Servilia, the mother of Brutus, with a trifle of a pearl worth over thirty thousand. Mark Antony's house was sold to Messala for over half a million, and Scaurus's villa was burned at a loss of over twelve millions. Otho spent over fourteen millions in finishing the wing of a palace commenced by Nero. One of Caligula's dinners cost a million dollars; and one of Heliogabalus's breakfasts, twenty-seven thousand dollars, Œsopus, the actor, swallowed a pearl worth eleven thousand dollars, and Apicius, the gourmand, ate over seventy-seven millions during his worthless life, and then committed suicide, because he was reduced one day to only a hundred thousand dollars in his purse.

I hold in my hand a huge iron token which Ptolemy struck in commemoration of his conquest of Egypt, and by its side the new two-cent piece of the United States, fresh and sparkling from the Mint at Philadelphia. The one antiquated, rude, corroded, and begrimed in its long conflict with time, and the other bright and vivid, its field and exergue unmarred, its emblems and legends clear and sharp. The coin of Ptolemy has a history. The obverse gives us undoubtedly the head of Jupiter, the cloud bearer, rugged, massive, stern, iron featured, taurine neck, hair in great serpentine coils and shocks; the reverse, a magnificent spread eagle, and the inscription in Greek, Basileus Ptolemaion. Ptolemy, flushed with the victory he had won for Alexander, issued it over two thousand years ago. After subserving the purposes of Athenian barter, some swarthy Egyptian obtained it; but our friend the Egyptian, in time, was gathered to his fathers. He was embalmed, and slept in the shadow of the Pyramid, where his royal predecessors were sleeping, and by the side of the eternal Sphynx, whose riddle he could not read in life. Perhaps death unsealed the mystery of those stony lips to him. The token was placed in the mummy case upon the Egyptian's lips, perhaps as Charon's toll. But, in that event, evidently our friend the Egyptian never crossed over the black river of Death, but is still wandering—a miserable shade—along its banks, seeking rest, and finding none. Token and Egyptian remained in their tomb while Thebes flourished and decayed, Tyre and Sidon crumbled into ruins, Rome, mistress of the world, cowered beneath the scourge of Goth and Vandal and Hun, and the earth was eclipsed in the night of the ages. Still the Pyramids towered toward heaven, the Sphynx gazed on with calm, earnest eyes, Memnon made music of welcome to the sun, and our token sealed the shrivelled silent lips of the Egyptian. The world emerged from its night. Dante and Aquinas, Copernicus and Galileo, Luther and Melanchthon, Gutenberg and Faust, Kant and Schlegel, Bacon, Leibnitz and Newton, Watt and Morse, tore away the seals before our token saw the light. It came forth into a new world by the hand of a missionary, preaching a religion founded three hundred years after it closed the lips of the Egyptian. The heathen god was upon its field, but the Christian religion had set aside the old mythology of which it was a representative. I turn from this relic of the past to the coin of the present, and upon the latter I find the acknowledgment of that religion, and of dependence upon its immutable Author: 'In God we trust;' and from this legend I augur deliverance from the troubles that beset us, the vindication of outraged laws, the Union of dissevered fragments, the return of peace to our distracted land, the integrity of the Republic.

MIRACLES

People refuse to believe in miracles because they esteem, them incredible: how, then, do they believe in existence—in the being of anything? Is it credible—to human reason, I mean—that anything should be without a cause? Nothing, so far as we can judge, ever comes to be without an efficient cause—something that goes before, with power to bring that which comes after.

But existence is an indisputable fact: we must believe it, whether we can or not.

Oh yes, one may say, but there is an infinite Being from all eternity, and He has produced all other forms of existence.

Very well; but if that be so, do not let us trouble ourselves about what are called miracles. They come very easily after the creation of light—the creation of sun and moon and stars; or even of nebulous matter, so constituted that by its revolution in space it may generate these wondrous orbs.

But there is a difficulty, it seems, about laws—natural laws: we are not to suppose that they will ever he violated. But there is another law above all these; all at least of the inanimate world, i.e., that the forces of brute matter are subject to the will, or whatever is analogous to will, in any living creatures. The law of gravitation is one of the most universally operative; but every bird rising upon its wings, every dog in its leaps, yea, the grasshopper springing from the earth, sets this law at defiance. Almost every common law of matter is set aside by the ingenuity of man, as put forth by that most truly spiritual faculty, the will.

Are we then to suppose that the Almighty has so tied his power to agencies purely material that He can never perform an act except under their regulation? This would leave Him with no discretional power whatever—with no such liberty even as that which He has bestowed upon every creature that has will, or anything like it. Is this the idea of a God infinite in power, as in wisdom and goodness? Are we to think that the Almighty has just for once set a universe in motion, and forever withdrawn Himself from all meddling with its affairs? He permits us to control the electric power: but is never permitted to direct a thunderbolt upon the guilty, or to turn one aside from any path it might incline to pursue!

Miracles! Is it then so much more wonderful that water should be turned into wine, than that a little water and a little earth, under the rays of the sun, should be turned into the beautiful flowers and luscious fruits of our gardens and orchards? These same elements are even now maturing gapes, which, with a little management, under merely natural forces, directed by a human will, may produce wine fit for the wedding feast of a king.

Or, in another line of thought, we may ask, Is it much more difficult to call back a living soul and unite it again to its former body than in any way to produce that soul at first?

These and the like considerations apply to the subject of prayer, and the special favors which it is believed to bring. We men are perpetually turning the forces of nature where we please, and for the most special purposes: can we for a moment imagine that the Almighty has less of this power of control than we?

LETTER OF HON. R. J. WALKER, IN FAVOR OF THE REËLECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

London, September 30, 1864

[The 'Letter of Hon. R. J. Walker' herewith offered to our readers, is no ephemeral production, to perish with the passing hour. The views therein offered, the vital principles discussed, the details given, the facts handled, have a wide bearing on the future policy and destiny of our country. Marked by the practical wisdom of the experienced statesman, while glowing with the fervor of the patriotic citizen, we have induced him to permit us to include this Letter in the loyal pages of the Continental, where so many of his important financial essays have already appeared. Our readers will find it a worthy and logical sequence from the premises heretofore sustained therein by his able pen.—Ed. Con.]

The succession of days and years and centuries is noted in calendars; but it is great events, constituting historical epochs, that mark the progress and destiny of our race. Decisive battles, vast reforms, civil or religious, great scientific discoveries or mechanical inventions, dynastic changes, political revolutions, the union or dismemberment of states, the birth or death of republics, the rise or fall of empires—these are the deep notches in the groove of time, the mighty landmarks in the pathway of humanity. It is the fate of the American Union, involving the liberty of our country and mankind, that is to be decided in our approaching Presidential election. How paltry are all party questions in the presence of an issue so transcendent as this! How dare we mingle old party names or conflicts with such a question, when the life of the Union is trembling in the balance! The maintenance of the Union is the one majestic question, and the Union party, in name, and in fact, is the only one that should exist, until this great issue is decided. Then, when the Union is rescued from present and future peril, we may exhume the past, use old party names, or discuss old party issues, but until then to unfold a party banner, and revive old party prejudices, is treason to our country and mankind. It is not Democrats alone, or Republicans alone, as separate parties marshalled against each other, that can save the Union. During this straggle for the Union, we do not hear of Democratic or Republican admirals or generals, divisions or regiments; no, we have only one great Union army, discarding all party names or symbols, and fighting only for and under the banner of the Union. It is then a grave objection to the Chicago McClellan Convention, that, in such a crisis as this, it summoned only a Democratic Convention, and appealed only to the Democratic party to save the Government. As well might we summon only a Democratic army to fight the battles of our country, as conduct such an election as this under any old party name and banner. Thousands of Republicans as well as Democrats, together, under the banner of the Union, fight now the battles of their country. Thousands of Republican as well as Democratic soldiers sleep in their bloody shrouds, or lie wounded on beds of agony; but who dare ask to what party they belonged? It was an unholy ambition, stimulated by party leaders, a thirst for office and emoluments, that rallied under an old party name at Chicago, when the whole people should have been summoned to the rescue.

And who met in council at Chicago? Was it the friends of the Union? No, it was Democrats, as they called themselves, whether unionists or disunionists. Avowed disunionists constituted a large and influential portion of the Convention (profaning the name of Democrats) that met together at Chicago. Who were Vallandigham and Harris and Long and many other of their compeers, who not only met together at Chicago, but some of whom were received with shouts of applause, and resolutions moved by some of them unanimously adopted. It was a meeting of loyal men and disloyal, peace and war men, unionists and disunionists. Every disunionist is a traitor. He is for the overthrow of the Republic, upon the demand of rebels in arms against the Government. Every peace man now on the Chicago McClellan platform is a disunionist and a traitor, because he knows, in his inmost soul, that no peace can be obtained but upon the ultimatum of Jefferson Davis, now officially proclaimed by him through the secretary of state to foreign Governments, namely, the severance of the Union, and the establishment throughout the South of a separate slave-holding empire. Most of these peace men openly avow their disunion doctrines, while others attempt to conceal their treason, under the transparent mask of an "armistice," a "cessation of hostilities," and an ultimate "convention of the States," ignominiously declaring, at the same time, by their platform resolutions at Chicago, that to suppress the rebellion by war has proved a failure. What truly loyal man, by voting for their candidates, will indorse at the polls such a platform as this? It is a surrender of our country's honor—it is a capitulation, upon the demand of Southern traitors, whose hands are dripping with the warm life blood of our sons and brothers, and who now boldly and defiantly pledge themselves to foreign Governments, as they always had declared to us, that they will have no peace unless based upon disunion. Did a Democratic Convention ever before receive avowed Disunionists and traitors among its number? Did it ever before trail in the dust the glorious flag of our country? Did it ever agree before, that our banner should be torn down from half the States and territory of the Union, and replaced by a foreign standard, having upon it but one emblazonry—the divinity and perpetuity of Slavery? And shall we treat with the Confederate authorities on this basis? No; while we will gladly treat with States and people desiring to return to the Union, with Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet brandishing over our heads the two-edged sword of Slavery and disunion, we will, in the emphatic words of General Jackson, "negotiate only from the mouths of our cannon."