The influence of hatred on the expenditure of money is seen in our attitude to threepenny bits.  Nine out of ten people feel sincerely indignant when a threepenny bit is given to them in their change.  The shopkeeper who gives you two threepenny bits instead of a sixpence knows this and, as he hands you the money, says apologetically:  “Do you mind?” You say:  “Not at all,” but you do.  You know that they will be a constant misery to you till you get rid of them.  You know that if you give one of them to a bus conductor, even if he is able to restrain himself, he will feel like throwing you off the top of the bus.  When at length you spend one of them in a post office—­one never has the same scruples about Government institutions—­you hurry out with a guilty air, not having dared to look the lady at the counter in the eye.  In the nineteenth century, when people went to church, they used to get rid of their threepenny bits at the collection.  They at once relieved themselves of a nuisance, and enjoyed the luxury of flinging the gleam of silver on to the plate.  Many a good Baptist has trusted to his threepenny bit’s being mistaken for a sixpence, by the neighbours, at least—­perhaps even by Heaven.  He has a notion that the widow’s mite was a threepenny bit, and feels that his gift is in a great tradition.

The popular hatred of certain coins, however, goes back to a far earlier date than the invention of the threepenny bit.  Even gold, when it was first introduced into the English coinage, was met with such a storm of denunciation that it had to be withdrawn.  This was in the time of Henry III., who issued a golden penny to take the place of the silver penny that had hitherto been the chief English coin.  It was only in the reign of Edward III. that gold coins became established in England They may have helped to recommend themselves to the nation by their intensely anti-French character.  They bore the French arms, and announced that King Edward was King of England and France.  France is a country lying close to the shores of England, and is of great strategic importance to her.  I do not know whether the copper coins which first came into England in the time of Charles II. raised any clamour of public protest.  The nation, I fancy, was so relieved to get back to cakes and ale that it was not inclined to be censorious about the new halfpennies and farthings.  In the old days, people had made their own halfpennies and farthings by the simple process of cutting pennies into halves and quarters.  They also issued private coins on the same principle on which we nowadays write cheques.  Municipalities and shopkeepers alike issued these tokens, or promises to pay, and without them there would not have been sufficient currency for the transaction of business.  The copper coins of Charles II. were intended to put a stop to this unofficial sort of money, but towards the end of the eighteenth century there was such a scarcity of copper currency that