just the same will happen, when your silver is raised and gold debased, in respect of one another, beyond their true and natural proportion: (natural proportion or value I call that respective rate they find, any where, without the prescription of law.) For then silver will be that which is brought in, and gold will be carried out; and that still with loss to the kingdom, answerable to the over-value set by the law. Only as soon as the mischief is felt, people will (do what you can) raise the gold to its natural value. For your accounts and bargains being made in the denomination of silver money, if, when gold is raised above its proportion, by the law, you cannot refuse it in payment (as if the law should make a guinea current at 22s. 6d.) you are bound to take it at that rate in payment. But if the law should make guineas current at 20s., he that has them is not bound to pay them away at that rate, but may keep them, if he pleases, or get more for them, if he can: yet, from such a law, one of these things will follow. Either, 1st, The law forces them to go at 20s. and then being found passing at that rate, foreigners make their advantage of it: Or, 2dly, People keep them up, and will not part with them at the legal rate, understanding them really to be worth more, and then all your gold lies dead, and is of no more use to trade than if it were all gone out of the kingdom: Or, 3dly, It passes for more than the law allows, and then your law signifies nothing, and had been better let alone. Which way soever it succeeds, it proves either prejudicial or ineffectual. If the design of your law takes place, the kingdom loses by it: if the inconvenience be felt and avoided, your law is eluded.

Money is the measure of commerce, and of the rate of every thing, and therefore ought to be kept (as all other measures) as steady and invariable as may be. But this cannot be, if your money be made of two metals, whose proportion, and, consequently, whose price, constantly varies in respect to one another. Silver, for many reasons, is the fittest of all metals to be this measure; and therefore generally made use of for money. But then it is very unfit and inconvenient that gold, 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 nor 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 silver, 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.

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 money made of it? I answer, quite the contrary. It is fit the kingdom should make use of the treasure it has. It is 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 inscription, 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 217. 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, of 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 equilibrium, where their varying weights depend on different causes. Put a piece of sponge 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 sponge 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 halfpenny), 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, entitled, 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 carried 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 certainly be brought to the mint; and when coined, cannot 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 England, 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.