ABSTRACT
English money could be physically converted into French money by melting and re-stamping. The 'weighing' of pounds had ceased to be a physical process, it was now a market process, a day-to-day confrontation of the French demand for pounds with the British demand for francs. The English travelers are not allowed to take pounds out of Britain: on the other hand the national authorities do grant them, at fixed exchange rates, a quantity of foreign currency units corresponding to a given, limited, amount of pounds. 'Inconvertible currencies' is an expression familiar to students of history. But this historical inconvertibility was something quite different from the new inconvertibility, and the similarity of name is confusing: therefore the old inconvertibility is 'irredeemability'. Convertibility in that older sense (redeemability) is not a quality which some currencies lack today; it is a quality which all currencies have lost.
