or any other metal, should be made current, legal money, at a standing, settled rate. This is to set a rate upon the varying value of things by law, which justly cannot be done; and is, as I have showed, as far as it prevails, a constant damage and prejudice to the country, where it is practised. Suppose fifteen to one be now the exact par between gold and silver, what law can make it lasting; and establish it so, that next year, or twenty years hence, this shall be the just value of gold to silver; and that one ounce of gold shall be just worth fifteen ounces of silver, neither more or less? It is possible, the East-India trade sweeping away great sums of gold, may make it scarcer in Europe. Perhaps the Guinea trade, and mines of Peru, affording it in greater abundance, may make it more plentiful; and so its value, in respect of silver, come on the one side to be as sixteen, or, on the other, as fourteen to one. And can any law you shall make alter this proportion here, when it is so every-where else, round about you? If your law set it at fifteen, when it is at the free market rate, in the neighbouring countries, as sixteen to one; will they not send hither their silver to fetch away your gold, at one-sixteen loss to you? Or if you will keep its rate to silver as fifteen to one, when in Holland, France, and Spain, its market value is but fourteen; will they not send hither their gold, and fetch away your sil ver, at one-fifteen loss to you? This is unavoidable, if you will make money of both gold and silver, at the same time, and set rates upon them by law, in respect of one another.

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What then! (will you be ready to say) Would you have gold kept out of England? Or, being here, would you have it useless to trade; and must there be no mo→ ney made of it? I answer, quite the contrary. It is fit the kingdom should make use of the treasure it has. It necessary your gold should be coined, and have the king's stamp upon it, to secure men in receiving it, that there is so much gold in each piece. But it is not necessary that it should have a fixed value set on it, by public authority: it is not convenient that it should, in its varying proportion, have a settled price. Let gold,

as other commodities, find its own rate. And when, by the king's image and description, it carries with it a public assurance of its weight and fineness; the gold money, so coined, will never fail to pass at the known market rates, as readily as any other species of your money. Twenty guineas, though designed at first for 201. go now as current for 211. 10s. as any other money, and sometimes for more, as the rate varies. The value, or price, of any thing, being only the respective estimate it bears to some other, which it comes in competition with, can only be known by the quantity of the one, which will exchange for a certain quantity of the other. There being no two things in nature, whose proportion and use does not vary, it is impossible to set a standing, regular price between them. The growing plenty, or scarcity, if either in the market, (whereby I mean the ordinary place, where they are to be had in traffic) or the real use, or changing fashion of the place, bringing either of them more into demand than formerly, presently varies the respective value of any two things. You will as fruitlessly endeavour to keep two different things steadily at the same price one with another, as to keep two things in an æquilibrium, where their varying weights depend on different causes. Put a piece of spunge in one scale, and an exact counterpoise of silver in the other; you will be mightily mistaken if you imagine, that because they are to-day equal, they shall always remain so. The weight of the spunge varying with every change of moisture in the air, the silver, in the opposite scale, will sometimes rise, and sometimes fall. This is just the state of silver and gold, in regard of their mutual value. Their proportion, or use, may, nay, constantly does vary, and with it their price. For, being estimated one, in reference to the other, they are, as it were, put in opposite scales; and as the one rises the other falls, and 'so on the contrary.

Farthings, made of a baser metal, may on this account too deserve your consideration. For whatsoever coin you make current above the intrinsic value, will always be damage to the public, whoever get by it. But of this I shall not, at present, enter into a more

particular inquiry; only this I will confidently affirm, that it is the interest of every country, that all the current money of it should be of one and the same metal; that the several species should be of the same alloy, and none of a baser mixture: and that the standard, once thus settled, should be inviolably and immutably kept to perpetuity. For, whenever that is altered, upon what pretence soever, the public will lose by it,

Since then it will neither bring us in more money, bullion, or trade; nor keep what we have here, nor hinder our weighty money, of what denomination soever, from being melted; to what purpose should the kingdom be at the charge of coining all our money anew? For I do not suppose any body can propose, that we should have two sorts of money, at the same time, one heavier, and the other lighter, as it comes from the mint; that is very absurd to imagine. So that if all your old money must be coined over again; it will indeed be some advantage, and that a very considerable one, to the officers of the mint. For they being allowed 3s. 6d. (it should be sixteen-pence half-penny), for the coinage of every pound troy, which is very near five and a half per cent. if our money be six millions, and must be coined all over again, it will cost the nation to the mint three hundred thirty thousand pounds. One hundred thirty thousand pounds, if the clipped money must escape, because it is already as light as your new standard; do you not own, that this design of new coinage is just of the nature of clipping?

This business of money and coinage is by some men,

and amongst them some very ingenious persons, thought a great mystery, and very hard to be understood. Not that truly in itself it is so, but because interested people, that treat of it, wrap up the secret, they make advantage of, in a mystical, obscure, and unintelligible way of talking; which men, from a pre-conceived opinion of the difficulty of the subject, taking for sense, in a matter not easy to be penetrated, but by the men of art, let pass for current, without examination. Whereas, would they look into those discourses, and inquire what meaning their words have, they would

find, for the most part, either their positions to be false, their deductions to be wrong, or (which often happens) their words to have no distinct meaning at all. Where none of these be, there their plain, true, honest sense, would prove very easy and intelligible, if expressed in ordinary and direct language."

That this is so, I shall show, by examining a printed sheet on this subject; intitled, "Remarks on a paper given in to the lords, &c."

Rem. "It is certain, that what place soever will give most for silver by weight, it will thither be car"ried and sold: and if of the money which now passes " in England, there can be 5s. 5d, the ounce given for "standard silver at the mint, when but 5s. 4d. of the very same can be given elsewhere for it, it will cer"tainly be brought to the mint; and when coined, can"not be sold (having one penny over-value set upon it "by the ounce) for the same that other plate may be "bought for, so will be left unmelted; at least it will "be the interest of any exporter to buy plate to send "out, before money; whereas now it is his interest to "buy money to send out before plate.'

Answ. The author would do well to make it intelligible, how, "of the money that now passes in Eng"land at the mint can be given 5s. 5d. the ounce for "standard silver, when but 5s. 4d. of the same money "can be given elsewhere for it." Next," How it has "one penny over-value set upon it by the ounce, so "that, when coined, it cannot be sold." This, to an ordinary reader, looks very mysterious; and, I fear, is so, as either signifying nothing at all, or nothing that will hold. For,

1. I ask, Who it is at the mint, that " can give 5s. 5d. "the ounce for standard silver, when nobody else "can give above 5s. 4d. ?" Is it the king, or is it the master-worker, or any of the officers? For to give 5s. 5d. for what will yield but 5s. 4d. to any body else, is to give one sixty-fifth part more than it is worth. For so much every thing is worth, as it will yield. And I do not see how this can turn to account to the king, or be borne by any body else.

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2. I ask, how a penny over-value can be set upon it by the ounce, "so that it cannot be sold?" This is so mysterious, that I think it near impossible. For an equal quantity of standard silver will always be just worth an equal quantity of standard silver. And it is utterly impossible to make sixty-four parts of standard silver equal to, or worth, sixty-five parts of the same standard silver; which is meant by setting a penny over-value upon it by the ounce,' "if that has any meaning at all. Indeed, by the workmanship of it, sixty-four ounces of standard silver may be made not only worth sixty-five ounces, but seventy or eighty. But the coinage, which is all the workmanship here, being paid for by a tax, I do not see how that can be reckoned at all; or if it be, it must raise every 5s. 4d. coined to above 5s. 5d. If I carry sixty-four ounces of standard silver in bullion to the mint to be coined, shall I not have just 64 ounces back again for it in coin? And if so, can these sixty-four ounces of coined standard silver be possibly made worth sixty-five ounces of the same standard silver uncoined, when they cost me no more; and I can, for barely going to the mint, have sixty-four ounces of standard silver in bullion turned into coin? Cheapness of coinage in England, where it costs nothing, will indeed make money be sooner brought to the mint, than any where else; because there I have the convenience of having it made into money for nothing. But this will no more keep it in England than if it were perfect bullion. Nor will it hinder it from being melted down, because it cost no more in coin than in bullion: and this equally, whether your pieces of the same denomination be lighter, heavier, or just as they were before. This being explained, it will be easy to see, whether the other things said in the same paragraph be true or false, and particularly, whether it will be "the interest of every exporter to buy plate to send "out before money."

Rem." It is only barely asserted, That if silver be "raised at the mint, that it will rise elsewhere above it; "but can never be known till it be tried."