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The Crisis of Coinage at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the 19th attracted the attention of economists, politicians and, of course, manufacturers. Matthew Boulton, having lobbied more or less continuously for ten years, often to Lord Liverpool, was rewarded with contracts to strike regal copper coins, but that only dealt with the problem of the smallest of change. The question of regal silver remained  unaddressed.

When Lord Liverpool’s health declined to the point where he became housebound, he started to work on revising a series of earlier notes to produce what he himself considered his testament, and his ‘last service’ to the King. The Treatise considers coins and currency in both practical and philosophical terms and reflects how a concerned and educated man regarded the issues of the day.

Original copies of Liverpool’s Treatise are scarce and quite expensive, but Google Books have scanned a copy and this is available free. Just click on the title page above, and a .pdf file will download which contains the full text.

Please note, though, that as the original work contains 287 pages, the file size is a rather chunky 10.4MB

A TREATISE ON THE COINS OF THE REALM: IN A LETTER TO THE KING

By Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool

Published 1805 at the Oxford University Press for Cadell & Davies of the Strand, London.

Charles Jenkinson

1727-1808

Baron Hawkesbury

1st Earl of Liverpool