paucity of reference to the subject, doubtless owing to the supreme importance of the war itself. On the 26th August 1643, and on the 24th February 1643-4, the Long Parliament issued orders, on the petition of merchant strangers who were prevented from importing bullion by the rigours of the search of their vessels, for their due encouragement. The petitions would argue a tendency towards an importation of specie, but in 1649 this was again changed, and a heavy export became perceptible. There can be little doubt that the initial impulse came from the new coinage which was instituted by the Act of 17th July 1649, and by the table of weights for the Commonwealth coins which that Act adopted. For two years and more both Council and Parliament were exercised in mind with regard to this export of specie and the consequent decay of trade, and draft Acts to prevent the export, as well as many other propositions, were had under long consideration. No measures were adopted, and an Amsterdam correspondent of Sir Robert Stone, in May 1652, thus gave his opinion of the wisdom of the Mint officials and the Government in this process of drift: "Experience has taught me that when the State does not keep extraordinary watch, and the laws are not put into execution against culling and sorting out the heaviest coins to be transported, and the light and clipped left behind, it is a great debasing of the current value of coin. All your silver money (i.e. in England) is thus abused by goldsmiths and others. And when the State does not employ such as can

discover those offenders, but puts persons into the Mint who have had no experience, great damage must follow. For there are bankers and exchangers in Holland who know the ignorance of all your present Mint men that have any place of trust, and laugh at them. They say when the Mint in the Tower flourished, old Andrew Palmer, Mr. Rogers, and one Cojan were there, who were all subtle Mint men, and held correspondence here (i.e. in Amsterdam), and knew what to do to advance the Mint, and would always find a way to bring grist to the mill. But now your Mint comes to be neglected and money adulterated. Many of our bankers here have a great trade with your goldsmiths and merchants in London for English gold and heavy English silver. Your Mint will never go until this be discovered, for these men are the sluices that drain all your money. I believe there is at this day forty times more gold and silver in the Low Countries than in England. About twelve years since the French were forced to call in all their money, it being so clipped that their commerce ran into confusion, and you have almost brought yourself to the same point, the coin in Ireland being 20 per cent. less value since the war. In England almost all your gold is transported, and the little that is left is in hucksters' hands, that go to an exchange in Lombard Street, and you must pay from £6 to £10, and sometimes more, to have £100 in gold for silver. For who will take gold to the Tower to be coined, and lose 2s. in 20s. of what

they can make by transporting it? We have more English gold in Amsterdam than you have (in England), all sent within those twenty years, and great quantities of English silver have weekly come over in pinks and Dutch men-of-war for years, to the value of many hundred thousands of pounds, in return for coin. I wondered at first how the merchants transported all the weighty and culled English money into Holland, until one of the bankers told me. I would have you inquire it and prevent it, for it is a most pernicious thing. It is the goldsmiths, especially those in Lombard Street, which are the greatest merchants, and London cashiers, and who will receive any man's money for nothing, and pay it for them the same or next day, and meantime keep people in their upper rooms to cull and weigh all they receive, and melt down the weighty, and transport it to foreign parts, sometimes without melting, and keep banks for all the principal coin in Christendom in their shops."

The succeeding years of the Commonwealth saw little change in the situation. In 1659 and 1660 the Council was still anxiously debating the question of the transport of bullion and coin. But this chain of phenomena refers to the third period in this history, and are to be treated of in that connection.

CLOSE OF THE SECOND PERIOD: RÉSUMÉ

In broadest and hastiest résumé, and this by way of justification of the length to which this chapter has been drawn out, the influence of American gold and silver makes itself perceptible in 1520. For forty years a level and equal advance in each of the

precious metals and in prices records itself, then the relative and absolute production of silver increases enormously over that of gold, and the ratio is disturbed. The inequality of the rate at which this change of ratio spreads to successive countries, and is adopted in their various Mint regulations, is the bullionist's or exchanger's opportunity, and the disastrous effect of their activity results in the crisis of 1570 in France, and 1622 in England and Germany. Properly speaking there has been no subsequent crisis in European history fitly comparable with the latter of these. If at all, there is only one comparison possible, and that is the currency situation in which the monetary world is at this moment, or which has come upon it since 1850—a period of bullion inflation in which silver has, finally as yet, outweighed gold, to the violent disturbance of the ratio. But, as will be seen, the other conditions of the comparison are not reducible to, or expressible in, similar terms, and so far the legitimate deduction fails. None the less, the currency history of Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has a vital didactic importance.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] The only accounts accessible are in Cabrera (see Philippson's "Estimate of the Revenues of Spain," in his Henrich IV. and Philipp III., vol. ii. p. 44), and relate only to the years 1599-1610. The amounts given are not the total yield of the American mines, which is out of the question, but the amount of metal brought yearly to Spain by the Silver Fleet. The amounts (without distinction of the metals) were as follow:—

15998,000,000 Ducats.
16009,926,192 Ducats.
160010,000,000 Ducats.
16011,000,000 Ducats.
160210,000,000 Ducats.
16037,000,000 Ducats.
160414,500,000 Ducats.
16069,000,000 Ducats.
16064,500,000 Ducats.
160712,200,000 Pesos.
16089,000,000 Ducats.
160910,600,000 Ducats.
161010,000,000 Ducats.