(no subject)

[timelets]

With the rise of these banks the profits from sweating, adulterating and otherwise diminshing the coinage fell. And, equally or more important, with the rise of national states coins became fewer and better minted.
The problems assiciated with money ceased to be those of coinage; the became, instead, those of banks and exchequers, not excluding those of the institutions that had been established to safeguard the coinage.