which amounted to about 5 per cent.; and as these returns might be made five or six times in a year considerable sums were got by it, to the prejudice of Great Britain, which thereby was drained of silver and overstocked with gold." He concluded by proposing to lower the price of guineas and all other gold specie.
ENGLAND: SIR ISAAC NEWTON'S REPORT, 1717
His speech was received with applause, and the House unanimously petitioned the King to call the guinea down to 21s., and other gold species in proportion. To this George I. immediately acceded, and the proclamation to that effect verbatim was issued on the following day, 22nd December 1717.
The report for which the House had called two days earlier, and which was produced on the 21st December, was the celebrated report made some months before by Sir Isaac Newton as master of the Mint, at the demand of the Commissioners of the Treasury. It is a document deserving the careful attention of every student of currency history. Newton reviews the ratio in each of the then commercial nations, and shows the effect of difference of ratio in producing export and disturbance of one or other metal. "Gold in Spain and Portugal is of sixteen times more value than silver of equal weight and alloy; at which rate a guinea is worth 21s. 1d. net; this high price keeps their gold at home in good plenty, and carries away the Spanish silver into all Europe. So that at home they make their payments in gold, and will not pay in
silver without a premium. Upon the coming in of a plate [silver] fleet the premium ceases or is but small, but as their silver goes away and becomes scarce the premium increases and is most commonly about six per cent."
In France the ratio was 15:1, and the guinea therefore worth 20s. 8 1⁄2d. In Holland it was worth 20s. 7 1⁄2d., in Italy, Germany, Poland, Denmark and Sweden, from 20s. 7d. to 20s. 4d. "In China and Japan the pound weight of fine gold is worth but 9 or 10 lbs. weight of fine silver, and in East India it may be worth 12 lbs., and the low price of gold in proportion to silver carries away the silver from all Europe." "If gold were lowered only so as to have the same proportion to the silver money in England, which it hath in the rest of Europe, there would be no temptation to export silver rather than gold to any part of Europe, and to compass this last there seems nothing more requisite than to take off about 10d. or 12d. from the guinea."
ENGLAND: THE STATE OF COINAGE IN 1760
In a subsequent report of the 21st September 1717, Newton stated that, since the beginning of 1702 to September 1717, the gold coined at the Mint amounted to £7,127,835, while the silver within the same period only amounted to £223,380, of which £143,086 had been brought to the Mint in response to the premium offered; in 1709 and 1711, of their own free will, the goldsmiths had only brought a matter of £21,220 to the Mint. In the House of Lords, early
in the following year, it was proved that during the year 1717 the East India Company had exported nearly 3,000,000 oz. of silver.
The immediate purpose of the above proclamation of 22nd December 1717 was for a time thwarted by a speculative hoarding of silver in expectation of a further calling down of the gold species; and it was to cut the ground from under this speculation that in January 1718 both Houses declared their determination not to alter the standard of gold and silver coins in the kingdom, and proceeded in place of such alteration to prepare a bill for preventing the melting down of the coins of the kingdom.