standard unit of value has been definitely connected with standard weights. _Coinage._—Gradually these weights, for greater ease of transfer and for clearer understanding of values, became the basis of coinage. The stamp of the coiner became a certificate of quality and quantity, and finally, as in the case of weights and measures, governments assumed the whole responsibility for fixing the weight and fineness of coins, and reduced all coinage to system, that every citizen might know the value of the unit in which he estimates any article of commerce. The early coins were definite weights of gold, silver or copper, and in many countries coins still bear the names that indicate their original weight. Yet arbitrary rulers have often sought to cheat their subjects by issuing coins of lighter weight and baser metal. The French livre, now the franc, is one seventy-second of its original value. English coins were debased ten times between the years 1299 and 1601 to exactly one-third of their original value. The loss from such debasement falls almost wholly upon the poor, whose wages fail to buy the usual food and clothing. Henry VIII reduced the coins of his realm again and again, until it would have taken five years’ revenue of Elizabeth’s reign to restore the currency. Elizabeth chose to take the standards as she found them, but to establish an absolute degree of purity and fix by law the weight of each coin in the system. The standard of purity since maintained in England is 22 carats, or eleven-twelfths fine, and weights have been maintained in spite of several efforts to reduce them. Other nations have taken similar steps with varying standards of purity: .835 in the Latin union, .9 in the United States, and over .96 in most coinage of western Asia. In this way the standard of value for every citizen of a country is as clearly defined as the standard of weight, and every transaction in trade, with every account of such transaction, involves that unit.