money.' Out of what? Out of money already coined, or out of bullion? For I would be glad to know where it is.

Rem. 'It may be some gain to those that will venture to melt down the coin, but very small loss (if any) to those that shall be paid in the new it is not to be denied, but that where any man has a rent-SEC, that can never be more, this may somewhat affect it; but so very little, it will scarce ever at all be perceived.'

Answ. As much as it will be gain to melt down their coin, so much loss will it be to those who are paid in new, viz., 5 per cent. which, I suppose, is more than the author would be willing to lose, unless he get by it another way.

Rem. 'And if the alteration designed should have the effect of making our native commodities any ways dearer-'

Answ. Here our author confesses, that proportionably as your money is raised, the price of other things will be raised too.

amends, he says,

But to make

Rem. 'It does at the same time make the land which produces them, of more than so much more in value.'

Answ. This 'more than so much more in value,' is more than our author or anybody else for him, will ever be able to make out.

The price of things will always be estimated by the quantity of silver given in exchange for them. And if you make your money less in weight, it must be made up in tale. This is all this great mystery of raising money, and raising land. For example: the manor of Blackacre would yesterday have yielded 100,000 crowns, which crownpieces, let us suppose numero rotundo to weigh each of them an ounce of standard silver. To-day your new coin comes in play, which is 5 per cent. lighter. There is your money raised: the land now at sale, yields 105,000 crowns, which is just the same 100,000 ounces of standard silver. There is the land raised. And is not this an admirable invention, for which the publick ought to be at above £100,000 charge for new coinage, and all your commerce put in disorder? And then to recommend this invention, you are told, as a great secret, that, 'had not money from time to time, been raised in its denomination, lands had not so risen too:' which is to say, had not your money been made lighter, fewer pieces of it would have bought as much land as a greater number does now.

Rem. 'The loss of payments, there spoken of, will, in no sort, be so great, as if the parties, to whom these debts are owing, were now bound to receive them in the money now passes, and then melt the same for at this they will have no cause to complain.'

down;

Answ. A very good argument! the clippers have robbed the publick of a good part of their money (which men will, some time or other, find in the payments they receive) and it is desired the mint may have a liberty to be beforehand with those, to whom debts are owing. They

are told, they will have no reason to complain of it, who suffer this loss, because it is not so great as the other. The damage is already done to the publick, by clipping. Where at last it will light, I cannot tell. But men, who receive clipped money, not being forced to melt it down, do not yet receive any loss by it. When clipped money will no longer change for weighty, then those, who have clipped money in their hands, will find the loss of it.

Rem. ‘It will make the customs better paid, because there will be more money.'

Answ. That there will be more money in tale, it is possible: that there will be more money in weight and worth, the author ought to shew. And then, whatever becomes of the customs, (which I do not hear are unpaid now) the king will lose in the excise above £30,000 per For in all taxes where so many pounds, shillings, or pence are determined by the law to be paid, there the king will lose 5 per cent. The author here, as in other places, gives a good reason for it: for, 'his majesty being to pay away this money by tale, as he received it, it will be to him no loss at all.'

annum.

As if my receiving my rents in full tale, but in money of undervalue five per cent. were not so much loss to me, because I was to pay it away again by tale. Try it at 50 per cent the odds only is, that one being greater than the other, would make more noise. But the author's great refuge in this is, that it will not be perceived.

Rem. ‘If all foreign commodities were to be purchased with this new species of money sent out; we agree, that with £100 of it, there could not be so much silver, or other commodities bought, as with £100 in crown-pieces as now coined, because they would be heavier; and all coin in any kingdom but where it is coined, only goes by weight; and for the same weight of silver, the same everywhere still will be bought; and so there will, with the same quantity of goods. And if those goods should cost 5 per cent. more here in England than heretofore, and yield but the same money (we mean by the ounce abroad) the same money brought home and coined, will yield the importer 5 per cent. more at the mint than it heretofore could do, and so no damage to the trader at all.'

Answ. Here truth forces from the author a confession of two things, which demonstrate the vanity and uselessness of the project. I. That upon this change of your coin, foreign goods will be raised. Your own goods will cost more five per cent. So that goods of all kinds being thereupon raised ; wherein consists the raising of your money, when an ounce of standard silver however minced, stamped, or denominated, will buy no more commodities than it did before? This confession also shews the falsehood of that dangerous supposition, that money, ‘in the kingdom where it is coined, goes not by weight,' ¿. e. is not valued by its weight.

Rem. 'It is true, the owners of silver will find a good market for it, and no others will be damaged; but, on the contrary, the making plenty of money will be an advantage to all.'

Answ. I grant it true, that if your money were really raised 5 per cent. the owners of silver would get so much by it, by bringing it to the mint to be coined. But since, as is confessed, commodities will (upon this raising your money) be raised to 5 per cent, this alteration will be an advantage to nobody, but the officers of the mint, and hoarders of money.

Rem. 'When standard silver was last raised at the mint, (which it was from 5s. to 5s. 2d. the ounce, in the 43d of Eliz.) and, for above forty years after, silver uncoined was not worth above 4s. 10d. the ounce which occasioned much coining; and of money, none in those days was exported: whereas silver now is worth but the very same 5s. 2d. the ounce still at the mint, and is worth 5s. 4d. elsewhere. So that if this bill now with the Lords does not happen to pass, there can never any silver be ever more coined at the mint; and all the milled money will, in a very little time more, be destroyed.'

Answ. The reason of so much money coined in queen Elizabeth's time, and afterwards, was not the lessening of your crown-pieces from 480 to 462 grains, and so proportionably all the rest of your money, (which is that the author calls raising standard silver from 5s. to 5s. 2d. the ounce) but from the over-balance of your trade, bringing them in plenty of bullion, and keeping it here.

How standard silver (for if the author speaks of other silver, it is a fallacy) should be worth its own weight in standard silver at the mint, (i. e. 5s. 2d. the ounce) and be worth more than its own weight in standard silver, (i. e. 5s. 4d. the ounce) in Lombard-street, is a paradox that nobody, I think, will be able to comprehend, till it be better explained. It is time to give off coining, if the value of standard silver be lessened by it; as it really is, if an ounce of coined standard silver, will not exchange for an ounce of uncoined standard silver, unless you add 15 or 16 grains overplus to it: which is what the author would have taken upon his word, when he says, 'Silver is worth 5s. 4d. elsewhere.'

5s. 4d. of money coined at the mint, the author must allow to be at least 495 grains. An ounce is but 480 grains. How then an ounce of uncoined standard silver, can be worth 5s. 4d. (i. e. how 480 grains of uncoined standard silver, can be worth 495 grains of the same standard silver, coined into money) is unintelligible; unless the coinage of our mint lessens the value of standard silver.

'SIR,-Coin and interest are two things of so great moment to the publick, and of so great concernment in trade, that they ought very accurately to be examined into, and very nicely weighed, upon any proposal of alteration to be made in them. I pretend not to have treated of

them here as they deserve. That must be the work of an abler hand, I have said something on these subjects, because you required it. And, I hope, the readiness of my obedience will excuse to you, the faults I have committed, and assure you that I am, Sir,

Your most humble servant,

JOHN LOCKE.

SHORT OBSERVATIONS ON A PRINTED PAPER,

ENTITULED,

'For encouraging the coining of silver money in England, and after for keeping it here!

THE author says, 'Silver yielding the proposed 2d. or 3d. more by the ounce, than it will do by being coined into money, there will be none coined into money; and matter of fact shews there is none.'

It would be hard to know what he means, when he says, silver yields 2d. or 3d. more by the ounce, than it will do by being coined into money' but that he tells us in plain words at the bottom of the leaf, 'that an ounce of silver uncoined, is of 2d. more value, than after it is coined it will be;' which I take the liberty to say, is so far from being true, that I affirm it is impossible to be so. For which I shall only give this short reason, viz., Because the stamp neither does, nor can take away any of the intrinsick value of the silver; and, therefore, an ounce of coined, standard silver, must necessarily be of equal value to an ounce of uncoined standard silver. For example; suppose a goldsmith has a round plate of standard silver, just of the shape, size and weight of a coined crown-piece, which, for brevity's sake we will suppose to be an ounce; this ounce of standard silver is certainly of equal value to any other ounce of unwrought, standard silver in his shop; away he goes with his round piece of silver to the Tower, and has there the stamp set upon it, when he brings this numerical piece back again to his shop coined, can any one imagine, that it is now 2d. less worth than it was, when he carried it out smooth, a quarter of an hour before; or, that it is not still of equal value to any other ounce of unwrought, standard silver in his shop? He that can say it is 2d. less worth, than it was before it had the king's image and inscription on it, may as well say, that 60 grains of silver, brought from the Tower, are worth but 58 grains of silver in Lombard-street.

But the author very warily limits this ill effect of coinage only to England; why it is so in England, and not everywhere, would deserve

a reason.

But let us grant it to be true, as our author affirms, that coined silver in England is one thirtieth worse, or less value, than uncoined;

the natural consequence from this, if it be true, is, that it is very unfit that the mint should be employed in England, where it debases the silver one thirtieth; for, if the stamp lessens the value of our silver this year, it will also do so the next, and so on to the end of the world, it always working the same way. Nor will the altering the denomination, as is proposed, at all help it.

But yet he thinks he has some proof for his proposition, because it is matter of fact that there is no money coined at the mint. This is the great grievance, and is one indeed, but for a different reason from what seems to inspire that paper.

The matter in short is this; England sending more consumable commodities to Spain than it receives from thence, the merchants, who manage their trade, bring back the overplus in bullion, which at their return, they sell as a commodity. The chapmen, that give highest for this, are, as in all cases of buying and selling, those who can make most profit by it; and those are the returners of our money, by exchange, into those countries, where our debts, any way contracted, make a need of it: for they getting 6, 8, 10, &c. per cent. according to the want and demand of money from England there, and according to the risque of the sea, buy up this bullion, as soon as it comes in, to send it to their correspondents in those parts, to make good their credit for the bills they have drawn on them, and so can give more for it than the mint rate, i. e. more than an equal weight of milled money for an equal weight of standard bullion; they being able to make more profit of it by returns.

Suppose the balance of our trade with Holland were in all other commodities equal, but that in the last East-India sale we bought of them of East-India commodities to the value of a million, to be paid in a month; within a month a million must be returned into Holland, this presently raises the exchange, and the traders in exchange sell their bills at high rates; but the balance of trade being (as is supposed in the case), equal in all other commodities, this million can no way be repaid to their correspondents, on whom those bills were drawn, but by sending them money, or bullion, to reimburse them.

This is the true reason why the bullion, brought from Spain, is not carried to the mint to be coined, but bought by traders in foreign exchange, and exported by them, to supply the overplus of our expences there, which are not paid for by our commodities. Nor will the proposed raising of our money, as it is called, whether we coin our money for the future one-thirtieth, or one-twentieth, or one half lighter than now it is, bring one ounce more to the mint than now, whilst our affairs in this respect remain in the same posture. And I challenge the author to show that it will; for saying is but saying. Bullion can never come to the mint to be coined, whilst the over-balance of trade and foreign expences are so great, that to satisfy them,