BIMETALLISM (Lat. big, twice lion. metal). The name given to a monetary system in which both gold and silver stand upon precisely the same footing as regards mintage and legal tender. The practical difficulties which in times past have confronted the maintenance of a concurrent circulation of the two metals have led one nation after another to abandon the effort, and to adopt a system of monometallism, with gold as its basis. The historical develop ment of coinage in modern nations has been from silver monometallism through a more or less un satisfactory experience with bimetallism to the single gold standard.
The English monetary notation with the pound as the unit recalls the origin of English money with a pound of silver as its basis. By successive debasements the coinage of the mone tary pound parted company with the pound weight, until, in the time of Elizabeth. the pound weight of silver was coined into 62s. instead of 20s. Gold coinage had been introduced by Ed ward III.. but a long course of experimentation, often of a most arbitrary nature, both with the silver coinage and the gold coinage, had failed to accomplish any satisfactory adjustment of their mutual relations. During this whole period silver was in theory the standard coin of the realm, and was so considered when William in 1699, completed the reeoinage of the silver coin. His Government fixed the value of the guinea at 21s. 6d., but as this overrated gold. the silver coinage. in excellent condition from its recent passage through the mint, was rapidly exported, and the loss of the small change caused great inconvenience among the people. On the advice of Sir Isaac Newton. then master of the mint. the guinea was in 1717 declared to be equal in value to 21s. This mitigated the evil, but did not remove it. Silver could be freely minted, as before, but since its market value was higher than its legal value. it was not carried to the mint. For all larger payments gold became the exclusive medium of exchange, for there was scarcely enough silver to meet the needs of retail trade. During the course of the century the stock of silver coin was not replenished, and the money in circulation became extremely abraded. This depreeiation of the coin led, in 1774. to the law that in sums of £25 and upward silver tffiould be legal tender by weight only, and not by tale. By the coinage law of 1816 silver was reduced to the place of a token eoinage. By that law, 66s. were to be coined from the pound
weight of silver, though the mint price paid to individuals remained, as before. 62s, for the pound. This threw the coinage of silver in fact upon the Government. and by the coinage act of 1870 the right of individuals to take silver to the mint for coinage was abolished. fly there successive steps England legalized the single gold standard. which had in fact been in operation since 1699 at least.
Other nations were slow' to follow this exam ple. By the monetary law of Ism France con templated the 5-franc silver piece as the stand ard money, but in fact established a bimetallic system. In the first half of the century silver remained the visual currency of the country; but after the discovery of gold in California and Australia and the fall of the price of gold relit, tiVelV to silver. the French law favored the coin age of gold. Silver disappeared from circulation, and the lack of small change led in 1861) to the reduction of the smaller silver coins to tokens by increasing the percentage of alloy. Similar but not uniform action by contiguous countries which used the same coin, and were accustomed to regard all francs as identical, irrespective of the heads upon the coins, led to much inconven ience. and finally, in 1S65. to the Latin Monetary Union for a common basis of coinage among na tions using the franc system. The 5-franc piece, then little coined, was not disturbed, but the sub sequent fall in the price of silver led to such ex cessive and unequal coinage by the several States composing the Union. that agreements were en tered into restricting, and finally abolishing, in 1877. the further coinage of the 5-franc piece. By this action, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece were added to the ranks of the gold-standard nations. Germany, which had been exclusively upon a silver basis until 1S71, in adopted the gold standard as one of the elements of the unification of the coinage following the establishment of the Empire. In deed. her action in throwing her stock of silver in the following years upon a market which was already falling, is deemed to have been an im portant factor in leading the Latin Union States to abandon silver. The Scandinavian countries and Holland followed the example of their neigh hors in the seventies, while Russia and AnstriA, then in the toils of a paper currency. were un able to take such action until the close of the century.