The same piece of eight, on the eve of the Revolution, would have been treated as 6 s. To do so is comparable to treating modern Canadian dollars and American dollars as interchangeable simply because they are both called “dollars.” All the local currencies were less valuable than sterling.2 A Spanish piece of eight, for instance, was worth 4 s. = 12d.).1 These pounds, shillings, and pence, however, were local units, such as New York money, Pennsylvania money, Massachusetts money, or South Carolina money and should not be confused with sterling. The units of account in colonial times were pounds, shillings, and pence (1£ = 20s., 1s. The unit of account and medium of exchange were similarly disconnected in colonial times (Adler, 1900). Guineas are the unit of account, but the medium of exchange accepted in payment is something else entirely. It is understood by all who participate in these auctions that payment is made according to the rule that one guinea equals 21s. Nowadays race horses are auctioned in England using guineas as the unit of account, although the guinea coin has long since disappeared. An example from modern times suggests how the ancient system worked. In the colonial era the unit of account and the medium of exchange were distinct in ways that now seem strange. Those readers who find their interest piqued by this article would be well advised to continue their study of the subject by consulting the more detailed discussions available in Brock (1956, 1975, 1992), Ernst (1973), and McCusker (1978). Any encyclopedia-length overview of the subject will, unavoidably, need to generalize, and few generalizations about the colonial monetary system are immune to criticism because counterexamples can usually be found somewhere in the historical record. The monetary system within each colony evolved over time, sometimes dramatically, as when Massachusetts abolished the use of paper money within her borders in 1750 and returned to a specie standard. Each colony had its own conventions, tender laws, and coin ratings, and each issued its own paper money. The monetary arrangements in use in America before the Revolution were extremely varied. “There certainly can’t be a greater Grievance to a Traveller, from one Colony to another, than the different values their Paper Money bears.” An English visitor, circa 1742 (Kimber, 1998, p.
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