OBSERVATIONS on the Guernsey Sunday Schools for 1824 and 1827, with the present census. * There is also a Sunday School for sailors and their children attached to the Guernsey Bethel Union Society. It is held every Sunday afternoon, immediately after the regular service is concluded: the number of scholars, 60. With the exception of 12 to 15, the scholars of the Wesleyan school also attend the Church Sunday School. - ABRAHAM LE MESURIER. CHAPTER XV. "Edward did smite round peny, halfe peny, farthing, On this money men wondered, when it first began to go." * I Ir appears by an ordinance, dated October 6th, 1623, that a species of coin called a furluque was coined in Guernsey; ' this, with all the coins in ancient use, have disappeared. The circu * The reader may perhaps be amused with the above extract from Stow's Chronicle, as it will inform him when the first halfe pence and farthings were made round, namely, in 1280. Stow says, "" Whereas before this time the peny was wont to have a double crosse with a creast in suche sort that the same might be easily broken in the midst or into four quarters, and so to be made into halfe pence or farthings; it was now ordayned that pence, halfe pence, and farthings should be made round, whereupon these verses were made. At this time, twentie pence wheighed an ounce of Troy weight, whereby the peny, halfe peny, and farthing were of good quantitie."-Regist. of Bury, Stow, temp. Edward I, p. 229. Bailey says, "A farthing of gold, or fourthling, in ancient times the fourth part of a noble, i. e. twenty pence, a noble being 68. 8d. of ancient value."-Bailey's Dictionary. To frayse is an old provincial word, to break or divide.Ibid. 1 "A furluque was one twenty-eighth part of a French penny."Berry, p. 118. E lating medium in the island now varies, according to the exchange with England, France, or Jersey, etc. The small coin constantly in use here is the liard, commonly called the double, being one-eighth of a penny sterling; these pieces are formed of various sizes, thickness, and materials, some of them being old English farthings, some Dutch or Flemish, others French or Spanish, many of them only very thin pieces of plain copper, whilst a few of them are soldiers' buttons, beaten flat. The silver coins in circulation consist chiefly of French half pieces, the value of which is here 2s. 4d., and the French old livre, of the value of ten pence. Both these sorts are too light in weight to pass for their current value in France; but they answer exceedingly well for the French or Guernsey importers of it, as they generally take care to purchase these coins by weight; the lighter therefore the piece, the greater profit there is in the exchange. The half livre, which is still worse, and scarcely worth three pence in silver, passes in this island for five pence. Should M. Fleury's proposition of March 7th, 1828, in the Chamber of Deputies, be adopted by the French legislature, these pieces will all be withdrawn from circulation in France, by January 1st, 1830; and if so, the loss to these islands must be very considerable, if not remedied in time: surely it requires the attention of the constituted authorities of the islands, or the English Government, to provide against it. English gold and silver are rarely to be met with, and English bank notes are scarce; both bearing a premium, according to the demand and exchange, the value varying from three to seven per cent or more. It is very extraordinary that in Jersey, where more English families arrive and continue, the exchange on London should be four and even five per cent more on drafts or bills than at Guernsey; this has brought into Guernsey the Jersey States' tokens of three shilling and eighteen-penny pieces, 1 See Guernsey Gazette of March 22, 1828. which lately have been as current as the French coin. The six franc pieces pass in Jersey for five shillings, but in Guernsey for only four shillings and ten pence. All these, with the one pound Guernsey States' notes, are in much request, being very commodious for the internal affairs of the island. The old species of money, now only to be found in the books of receipt, viz. the noble, the ecu, the gros, the estling, the florin, the sol, the denier, the noires-mailles, and the obole, are no longer known, except as reserved rents of ancient estates. For the value of these respective coins, the reader is referred to Warburton, p. 116, and Berry, p. 118. It appears from the meeting of the States of March 27th, 1828, by the Bailiff's statement, that at the end of the year 1829, the debt of the States, not reckoning the expenses and money allowed for the College, will be in States' notes in circulation, 15,0007.; to which may be added 8,000/., in States' notes for divers anticipations for Sark, and other public works, which the revenues of the five first years of the new impost are charged by the States to pay; as may be seen in the Billet d'Etat, for the meeting of the States on Nov. 15th, 1827. There are also 10,0007., for which interest is paid of three per cent. per annum. The States' notes to be found in circulation, according to this Statement, in 1829, will be 23,0007. The 2,000l. which are to cancel part of the States' debt (not relating to the College), the Bailiff says, may be allowed that establishment; which will save the interest paid by the Directors of it for money borrowed, till the new impost on spirits takes effect in 1830. One of the Members of the States (W. Collins, Esq.) says, that the number of the States' notes at present (1827) in circulation amounts to 28,0007.; and he strongly recommends the States to increase them, in order to save the interest of the debt; and he says, that the new Banking Company have, since June 1827, upwards of 30,000/. in circulation; and he further adds, that the two former banks which existed seventeen years ago, had 150,000 of their notes at one time in circulation. It must indeed appear extraordinary to a stranger, that while the States and the Royal Court have thought it necessary, when forming their new tariff, to affix the duties according to the present value of British money, they should still continue to adjudge the fines of the Court in livres tournois, a coin no longer in existence, and for many years abolished in France, to which it belonged, the nominal value of which in this island is one shilling and one-sixth of a fourteenth part; this must certainly appear to an Englishman a strange mode of proceeding, while the inhabitants are living under an English Government, and a fifth of whom are perhaps entirely English. Why should not all the fines and contracts, where money is concerned, be passed in the currency of the island? and why should not that currency be the same as in Great Britain, or, which would be much better, as lately in Ireland? For if it were so, there would be less temptation to export it from the islands. Every person might then easily calculate the difference between the French currency and British sterling. If the constituted authorities of the island were of my opinion, that no evil could accrue, but much benefit, to the inhabitants at large from the above plan being adopted, there is no doubt but that the British Government would attend to their application for a supply; as it appears from the public prints of the day (1825), that the Government have taken the currency of the Foreign settlements into consideration, and “that a very extensive coinage has taken place, for export to the English colonies to supersede the dollars and other circulating medium in all the English possessions; this measure," it is added, "will facilitate the exchange of all articles, and greatly promote commerce.". Let us hope, that these islands may not be forgotten in the division of this coinage, when upwards of 50,000, or perhaps 60,000 inhabitants would be more or less benefited by it. Then, instead of the 1 |