The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Preface.
• Vaughan, a Discourse of Coin and Coinage
• Chap. I.: Of the First Invention and Use of Money.
• Chap. II.: Of the Matter of Money.
• Chap. III.: Of the Forms of the Money Anciently and Now In Use.
• Chap. IV.: Of the Proportions Held Between Gold and Silver, Antient and Modern.
• Chap. V.: Of the Raising of the Price of Money Both of Silver and Gold.
• Chap. VI.: Of Base Money.
• Chap. VII.: Of the Inconveniences In General Grown In the Matter of Money.
• Chap. VIII.: Of the Low Price of Our Silver.
• Chap. IX.: Of the Prohibition of Forrein Moneys, Especially Spanish.
• Chap. X.: Of the Unequal Coinage of Our Moneys.
• Chap. XI.: Of the Great Increase of the Proportion Between Gold and Silver, and the Things Valued By Them; By Which There Is Grown a Greater Want of Money In England Than Was In Antient Times, and of the Causes Thereof, and of the Remedies Which May
• Chap. XII.: Of the Raising of the Price of Moneys By Our Neighbours, and the Defect of Our Not Raising of Our Moneys Accordingly.
• Chap. XIII.: Of the Benefits Which Do Grow Unto the State By the Raising of Moneys, and the Prejudices Which Do By Not Raising of It.
• Chap. XIV.: The Benefits Which Do Grow to the State By the Not Raising of Money, and the Prejudices Which Do Grow By the Raising of It.
• Chap. XV.: Examinations of the Reasons For the Raising of Money.
• Chap. XVI.: Examinations of the Reasons For the Not Raising of Money.
• Chap. XVII.: Of Contracting With Forrein Nations By Ambassadors to Keep Their Moneys At a Certain Standard.
• Chap. XVIII.: Of the Ordaining of Solid Payments.
• Chap. XIX.: Of Equalizing the Exchange.
• Chap. XX.: Of Reducing Moneys to the Lowness of Ancient Values.
• Chap. XXI.: Of Raising Our Moneys According to the Raising of Our Neighbours.
• Chap. XXII.: Of Introducing Two Different Species of Money.
• Chap. XXIII.: Of Coining of Moneys Without Distinction of Weights.
• Lord Coke’s Account of Coin and Coining.
• Cotton, a Speech Touching the Alteration of Coin.
• The Answer of the Committees Appointed By Your Lordships to the Proposition Delivered By Some Officers of the Mint, For Infeebling His Majesties Monies of Gold and Silver.
• The First Part. the Preamble.
• Questions to Be Proposed to the Merchants, Mint Masters, and Goldsmiths Concerning the Alteration of the Silver-monies.
• Certain General Rules Collected Concerning Money and Bullion Out of the Late Consultation At Court.
• Advice of His Majesty’s Council of Trade, Concerning the Exportation of Gold and Silver In Foreign Coins and Bullion. (concluded December 11. 1660.)
• Reasons Aud Arguments For the Free Exportation of Gold and Silver In Foreign Coin and Bullion.
• Sir William Pettys Quantulumcunque Concerning Money, 1682.
• Questions.
• A Report Containing an Essay For the Amendment of Silver Coins
• The Second General Head Concerning the Present State and Condition of the Gold and Silver Conis.
• The Third General Head Discusses This Question, Whether It Be Or Be Not Absolutely Necessary At This Time to Re-establish the Coins.
• The Fourth General Head Is to Propose the Means That Must Be Obtained, and the Proper Methods to Be Used In and For the Re-establishment of the Silver Coins.
• The Fifth General Head Considers What Must Supply the Commerce, Pay Taxes, &c. Whilst the Clipt Money Is Under Its New Fabrication.
• In Quodam Libro Vocato Nigro Scripto Tempore Regis Henrici Secundi, Per Gervasium Tilburiensem, De Necessariis Scaccarii, Remanente In Curia Receptæ Scaccarii, Inter Alia Sic Continetur.
• A Computation of the Common Weight of a Hundred Pounds By Tale, In Ordinary Silver Money At This Day, Taken From a Medium of the Bags, Weighed At the Receipt of Exchequer, In May, June, and July Last.
• Note On the Re-coinage of 1696-99.
• Representations of Sir Isaac Newton On the Subject of Money. 1712-1717.
• Representation First
• Representation Second.
• Representation Third.
• Tables Illustrative of the Successive Changes In the Standard, In the Weight of the Coins, and In the Relative Values of Gold and Silver In England, From the Conquest Down to 1717.
• Note On Scotch Money, With Tables Showing the Successive Changes In the Standard In the Weight of the Coins, and In the Relative Values of Gold and Silver, From 1107 to 1707, When Scotland Ceased to Have a Peculiar Coinage.
• Observations On Coin In General, With Some Proposals For Regulating the Value of Coin In Ireland.
• Essays On Money and Coin I
• Part I.: The Theories of Commerce, Money, and Exchanges.
• Chapter I.—: Of the Nature and Origin of Wealth and Commerce.
• Chapter II.—: Of Money and Coins.
• Chapter III.: Of Exchanges.
• Essays On Money and Coin Ii
• The Preface.
• Part II.
• Chapter I.: A Summary Account of All the Alterations That Have Been Made In Our Standard of Money, From the Norman Conquest to the Present Time, With the Opinions of Some Very Eminent Men Upon Those Kinds of Measures.
• Chapter II.: The Established Standard of Money Should Not Be Violated Or Altered, Under Any Pretence Whatsoever.
• Postscript. of Standard Measures.
• Reflections On Coin In General
• Raper, an Inquiry Into the Value of the Ancient Greek and Roman Money.
• Introduction.
• § 1.: Of the Attic Drachm.
• § II.: Of the Eginean and Euboïc Talents.
• § III.: Of the Roman Money.
• § 4.: Of the Value of Gold In Greece and Rome.
• § V.: Of the Value of the Ancient Greek and Roman Money.
• Conclusion.
• Tables Showing the Denominations of the Principal Greek and Roman Coins, and Their Values In Sterling Money,

CHAP. XX.

Of Reducing Moneys to the Lowness of Ancient Values.

SOME are of Opinion, that the best course to remedy all Inconveniences in Matters of Money, were to reduce it to the ancient Value:

As for example, A pound weight of Silver of the sterling standard to make but twenty shillings in Silver; and a pound weight of crown Gold to make 12l. sterling; and so Angel-Gold to be coined in Proportion, for (say they,) since that was the first and original settlement of the sterling standard, and that by the raisings of other Nations whom we thought it necessary to follow, we are grown to that excessive diminution of the Intrinsical value of our Money as is manifest, and that the Mischiefs do so threaten us, by the daily raising of our Neighbours, as at length (to bring on) inevitable Confusion; it will be best to reform the Mischief before it be grown to extremity; and the best Reformation will be to reduce it to the first and original settlement: The Commodities whereof are many:

First, The prices of things will be reduced to some antient moderation, then those who live upon antient Rents, and Fees, and Rights, and Tenures of their Lands and Offices, who have received extream injustice by the diminution of the Intrinsical value of Money, shall by this Reduction be recompenced in justice again. But above all, the King, whose Revenue is only publick, shall receive a great and a just enlargement therein: This Diminution of the intrinsical value of Money being not the least cause of the visible wants wherewith the Crown is this day oppressed, and this Reduction being so great and important as it is, all other Nations, and all Merchants in their exchanges, must of necessity come to a new valuation of their Moneys in comparison of ours: and that cannot be, but by a true calculation of the intrinsical value of either of them, by which means if we do now sustain any wrong by the reputed valuation of our Moneys, or exchange of them, we shall then receive right. And England being a Countrie able to send out more Commodities than it hath need to receive, we shall of necessity return the overplus in Bullion.

But to examine the solid Truth of these Allegations, it will be necessary to consider by what means this Reduction may be effected.

First, Therefore if you will reduce Moneys to the antient values, either you must do it by several degrees, (this being the way by which the mischief grew) or you must do it all at once.

As for example of a Reduction by degrees, Silver is now coined at five shillings and two pence an ounce, and Crown Gold at three pound eight shillings and four pence the ounce; begin then, first to reduce by coining Silver at fourteen groats the Ounce, and Crown Gold at three pound one shilling and six pence the Ounce; and when it is thus settled, then some time after reduce them both, yet to a lower price, and so until you come to the Original settlement. But is it not then manifest that if these coins be so much heavier than the former, as this Proportion doth make them, and yet go at the same price as the other did, yet as fast as they are coined, they will be melted or transported for advantage?

Besides our Merchants will (not) bring this Silver and Gold unto you to so great a loss: on the other side, if you make all the old Money uncurrent, and you do make it so many times uncurrent as you do reduce it towards the antient values, by degrees the confusions will be so great as the Kingdom cannot bear them, and the continual new coining of your Money will consume all the value of your Money in that charge: there is then no other way left but to leave the old Money still current, but abased so much in price as it is worse than the new Money in intrinsical value. But this is hardly possible, considering that the fractions in the old Money will be so confused as no man shall know how to pay or receive it; besides all men of what condition soever that are to pay Money, in what nature soever, shall pay ten in the Hundred more than they should otherwise have done.

But suppose this Inconvenience might be sufferable for once, yet when they must return again, as often as by degrees you do reduce your Money towards the antient values, I do see no possibility to conquer them; it is then best to consider what will follow of it, if this Reduction to the antient values be made all at once, which is thus propounded.

That new Money should be coined at twenty pence an ounce, Silver; and that the old Money should be still left current at the third part of the value for which now it goeth, as six pence to be current for two pence, and twelve pence for a groat, so as all Fractions should be avoided: and the Gold should be reduced to a like Proportion, and that all contracts and payments, from such a day to come, should be made and paid in new Money or in old Money, valuing it only at the third part of the new Money; But if the Proposition were simply thus, it were insupportable, for then he that sits now at a rent of 10l. a year, and is hardly able to pay it should in effect, after the day when the new Money is to be current, pay thirty pounds a year; and he that borrowed ten pounds before that day, after that day shall pay thirty, and so it would be of all other payments. And it is no satisfaction to say, That would be no Injustice, because he that pays Money, either for Debt or Rent, or any other waies, must receive it from others, be it either in Debt, Rent, or for the price of any thing to be sold, and so he shall pay no more in Proportion than he shall receive: for if it be true, which is the mainest Benefit propounded by this Reduction, that as the price of Money shall be abased so the price of all things will abate in Proportion, then he that is to raise his payments out of the price of other things shall raise no more in intrinsical value than he should have done before, yet he shall pay in intrinsical value thrice as much as he did before.

To solve this Objection, there are two ways propounded, but either of them have their Inconveniences;

The first is, that this payment in new Money shall only extend to future Contracts, and that all former Contracts shall either be paid in old Money or in new Money valued at three times the old Money: But if you admit of this, you shall by this Reduction only raise a great rumor and Confusion among the People, and all the Benefits propounded are quite blown away.

Besides the Injustice, as it was very apparent to all that were to pay Money in the former way, so it is as apparent in this way to all that are to receive Money, for that they shall receive in extrinsical value but two pence for six pence, and one shilling for 3 shillings, but above all others, the King would be most prejudiced.

The second way of solving the former Objection is this, That all payments, for the future, should be made in new Money or in old, valuing the old a third part, and that in like manner all antient Contracts, Rents, and Rights reserved should be acquitted in new Money, or in old Money valued at the third part of the new, and that this word of antient Contracts and Rights, should be defined from such a time as since which the prices of things have encreased, as the value of Money is by this Reduction to be abated; As for Example,

Since the year of the eighteenth of Henry the Eighth, when he began to coin Base money, since which time generally the price of things is trebled at the least, in some more, in some less. And that all Contracts and payments reserved, since the eighteenth year of Henry the Eighth, until the day when the new Money is made current, should be acquitted in old Money, or in new Money valued three times as much as the old: By this means the Injustice of the former ways seemeth to be equally parted, in that some Receivers by this way should gain and some Receivers should loose, and some Payers should gain and some should loose.

But this Proposition brings with it a new Inconvenience, which is, That this time of the eighteenth of Henry the Eighth, being so antient, it would breed many Controversies, as to what payments were contracted for or reserved before that time or not. But suppose that this Reduction were effected, and that our Moneys were both by reputed valuation and by exchange compared with Forrein Moneys, according to their true intrinsical value, yet do I not see that this Reformation, for all this, would be stable and permanent; for, if afterwards other Nations shall by degrees again diminish the Intrinsical value of their Moneys, either we must resolve to stand firm to this Reduction, and so to take the hazard of all losses and Inconveniences which the not raising of our Moneys when our Neighbours raise theirs do bring with it; or if we shall raise again as they shall raise theirs, then all the benefit of this troublesom Reduction will be, That we shall yet be three hundred years longer ere we do grow to so great a diminution in the Intrinsical value of our Moneys, as we do at this present undergo.