Mr. Lownds’s Report, p. 28. and onwards.
This has been judicially and fully stated by Mr. Lownd’s, who hath shown the undeniable Expediency of keeping up always our Silver Coin, to the present Fineness, as that illustrious and solid Writer Sr. Robert Cotton had likewise shew’d, and therefore I will say nothing on this Topic, lest I should seem to build upon other Mens Foundations; and I the rather omit it, because all that hath, or can be said, against the raising of the extrinsic Valuation of Coin, above the real Value, is applicable to the abasing of it by Allay, and I fully assent to that Axiom, That the debasing our Money, by Allay, and raising the Value of the Standard, is only doing one and the same thing, (to most Intents and Purposes) by two several Ways or Means.
Suppose then but two Ways of debasing it, by Quantity, or by Quality, and still that is all but debasing of it, that is, giving it a Value in Name, of more than it hath Intrinsically or Really; for this more than Intrinsic Value, is meerly Extrinsical, supposed, or denominated: in short ’tis a fictitious imaginary Value, and not a real one, above the intrinsic.
Cotton’s Posthuma, p. 287.
And this, to say no more of it, is the reviving of that Monster which Q. Elizab. of Happy Memory so gloried in the subduing; and I doubt we have Monsters enough to deal with, without reviving more.
This is such a devouring Expedient as will immediately swallow down a Part of every Man’s Estate, and at last consume the Nation.
The Price of every thing will rise instead of falling.
For if we were willing to submit to this at home, yet there is such a Combination, between our Foreign and Home Trade, and the Relation between ’em is so inseparable, that let the State give it what Name it will, it will pass for no more at home than it doth abroad, unless the heavy Balance of Trade was on our side the Water; and it will pass for no more abroad than it is really, not Extrinsically or Imaginarily, worth at home.
An Act of Parliament can as well make a Scotch Pound pass for an English, as half an Ounce of Silver in England to go for an Ounce in Holland, without some Consideration as may Balance the Difference.
Let us call a six peny-Weight of Silver a Crown-Piece, as loud and as long as we will, yet we shall never buy a Pound of Nutmegs with Four of ’em, unless you’ll give the Dutch Merchant a Yard of broad-Cloth, or something else into the Bargain.