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1. It is past doubt that our money is melted down. The reason whereof is evidently the cheapness of coinage. For a tax on wine paying the coinage, the particular owners pay nothing for it. So that 100 ounces of silver coined come to the owner at the same rate as 100 ounces of standard silver in bullion. For delivering into the mint his silver in bars, he has the same quantity of silver delivered out to him again in coin, without any charges to him. Whereby, if at any time he has occasion for bullion, it is the same thing to melt down our milled money, as to buy bullion from abroad, or take it in exchange for other commodities. Thus our mint, to the only advantage of our officers, but at the public cost, labours in vain, as will be found. But yet this makes you not have one jot less money in England than you would have otherwise; but only makes you coin that, which otherwise would not have been coined, nor perhaps been brought hither: and, being not brought hither by an over-balance of your exportation, cannot stay when it is here. It is not any sort of coinage does or can keep your money here; that wholly and only depends upon the balance of your trade. And had all the money in king Charles the Second's and king James the Second's time been minted, according to this new proposal, this raised money would have been gone, as well as the other, and the remainder been no more, nor no less than it is now. Though I doubt not but the mint would have coined as much of it as it has of our present milled money. The short is this: an overbalance of trade with Spain brings you in bullion; cheap coinage, when it is here, carries it into the mint, and money is made of it; but, if your exportation will not balance your importation in other parts of your trade, away must your silver go again, whether monied or not monied. For where goods do not, silver must, pay for the commodities you spend.

That this is so will appear by the books of the mint, where may be seen how much milled money has been coined in the two last reigns. And in a paper I have now in my hands (supposed written by a man not wholly

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ignorant in the mint) it is confessed, that whereas onethird of the current payments were some time since of milled money, there is not now one-twentieth. Gone then it is but let not any one mistake, and think it gone because in our present coinage an ounce wanting about 16 grains is denominated a crown or that (as is now proposed) an ounce wanting about 40 grains, being coined in one piece, and denominated a crown, would have stopped it, or will (if our money be so altered) for the future fix it here. Coin what quantity of silver you please in one piece, and give it the denomination of a crown; when your money is to go, to pay your foreign debts, (or else it will not go out at all) your heavy money (i. e. that which is weight according to its denomination, by the standard of the mint) will be that which will be melted down, or carried away in coin by the exporter, whether the pieces of each species be by the law bigger or less. For, whilst coinage is wholly paid for by a tax, whatever your size of money be, he that has need of bullion to send beyond sea, or of silver to make plate, need but take milled money and melt it down, and he has it as cheap as if it were in pieces of eight, or other silver coming from abroad; the stamp, which so well secures the weight of the milled money, costing nothing at all.

To this perhaps will be said, That if this be the effect of milled money, that it is so apt to be melted down, it were better to return to the old way of coining by the hammer. To which I answer, by no means. For,

1. Coinage by the hammer less secures you from having a great part of your money melted down. For in that way there being a greater inequality in the weight of the pieces, some being too heavy, and some too light; those, who know how to make their advantage of it, cull out the heavy pieces, melt them down, and make a benefit of the over-weight.

2. Coinage by the hammer exposes you much more to the danger of false coin. Because the tools are easily made and concealed, and the work carried on with fewer hands and less noise than a mill; whereby false coiners are less liable to discovery.

3. The pieces not being so round, even, and fairly stamped, nor marked on the edges, are exposed to clipping, which milled money is not.

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Milled money is, therefore, certainly best for the public. But, whatever be the cause of melting down our milled money, I do not see how raising our money (as they call it) will at all hinder its being melted down. For if our crown-pieces should be coined onetwentieth lighter, why should that hinder them from being melted down, more than now? The intrinsic value of the silver is not altered, as we have shown already: therefore that temptation to melt them down remains the same as before.

"But they are lighter by one-twentieth." That cannot hinder them from being melted down. For half-crowns are lighter by half, and yet that preserves

them not.

"But they are of less weight under the same denomination, and therefore they will not be melted down." That is true, if any of these present crowns, that are one-twentieth heavier, are current for crowns at the same time. For then they will no more melt down the new light crowns, than they will the old clipped ones, which are no more worth in coin and tale, than in weight and bullion. But it cannot be supposed that men will part with their old and heavier money at the same rate that the lighter new coin goes at, and pay away their old crowns for 5s. in tale, when at the mint they will yield them 5s. 3d. And then if an old milled crown goes for 5s. 3d. and a new milled crown (being so much lighter) goes for a crown, What, I pray, will be the odds of melting down the one or the other? The one has one-twentieth less silver in it, and goes for onetwentieth less; and so being weight, they are melted down upon equal terms. If it be a convenience to melt one, it will be as much a convenience to melt the other; just as it is the same convenience to melt milled halfcrowns as milled crowns, the one having, with half the quantity of silver, half the value. When the money is all brought to the new rate, i. e. to be one-twentieth lighter, and commodities raised as they will propor

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tionably, what shall hinder the melting down of your money then, more than now, I would fain know? Ifit be coined then, as it is now, gratis, a crown-piece, (let it be of what weight soever) will be, as it is now, just worth its own weight in bullion of the same fineness; for the coinage which is the manufactory about it, and makes all the difference, costing nothing, what can make the difference of value? And therefore, whoever wants bullion, will as cheaply melt down these new crowns, as buy bullion with them. The raising of your money cannot then (the act for free coinage standing) hinder its being melted down.

Nor, in the next place, much less can it, as it is pretended, hinder the exportation of our bullion. Any denomination, or stamp, we shall give to silver here, will neither give silver a higher value in England, nor make it less prized abroad. So much silver will always be worth (as we have already showed) so much silver, given in exchange one for another. Nor will it, when in your mint a less quantity of it is raised to a higher denomination (as when nineteen-twentieths of an ounce has the denomination of a crown, which formerly belonged only to the whole 20) be one jot raised, in respect of any other commodity.

ཎྜ*

You have raised the denomination of your stamped silver one-twentieth, or, which is all one, five per cent. And men will presently raise their commodities five per cent. So that if yesterday 20 crowns would exchange for twenty bushels of wheat, or 20 yards of a certain sort of cloth, if you will to-day coin current crowns one-twentieth lighter, and make them the standard, you will find 20 crowns will exchange for but 19 bushels of wheat, or 19 yards of that cloth, which will be just as much silver for a bushel as yesterday. So that silver being of no more real value, by your giving the same denomination to a less quantity of it; this will no more bring in, or keep your bullion here, than if you had done nothing. If this were otherwise, you would be beholden (as some people foolishly imagine) to the clippers for keeping your money. For if keeping the old denomination to a less quantity of silver be raising your money

(as in effect it is all that is or can be done in it, by this project of making your coin lighter) the clippers have sufficiently done that: and, if their trade go on a little while longer, at the rate it has of late, and your milled money be melted down and carried away, and no more coined; your money will, without the charge of new coinage, be, by that sort of artificers, raised above five per cent. when all your current money shall be clipped, and made above one-twentieth lighter than the standard, preserving still its former denomination.

It will possibly be here objected to me, That we see 100%. of clipped money, above five per cent. lighter than the standard, will buy as much corn, cloth, or wine, as 100%. in milled money, which is above one-twentieth heavier: whereby it is evident that my rule fails, and that it is not the quantity of silver that gives the value to money, but its stamp and denomination. To which I answer, That men make their estimate and contracts according to the standard, upon supposition they shall receive good and lawful money, which is that of full weight and so in effect they do, whilst they receive the current money of the country. For since 100%. of clipped money will pay a debt of 100l. as well as the weightiest milled money; and a new crown out of the mint will pay for no more flesh, fruit, or cloth, than five clipped shillings; it is evident that they are equivalent as to the purchase of any thing here at home, whilst nobody scruples to take five clipped shillings in exchange for a weighty milled crown. But this will be quite otherwise as soon as you change your coin, and (to raise it as you call it) make your money one-twentieth lighter in the mint; for then nobody will any more give an old crown of the former standard for one of the new, than he will now give you 5s. and 3d. for a crown: for so much then his old crown will yield him at the mint.

Clipped and unclipped money will always buy an equal quantity of any thing else, as long as they will without scruple change one for another. And this makes that the foreign merchant, who comes to sell his goods to you, always counts upon the value of your money,

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