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with; the coins being cut by hand-shears, and stamped with hand-hammers, and being thus so ill-shapen to begin with, and of such irregular size, that they could be "clipped" over and over again without much fear of detection. Money-clipping became a regular and very profitable trade, which not even the law of Elizabeth's reign, making it as culpable as high treason, could seriously diminish. In 1663 a better system of coinage was introduced, and large quantities of milled money were issued every year from the mint, only, however, to be exported or to be melted down at home, and the old hammered money continued to be the only coin in general use. Golden guineas-themselves depreciated in value-were eagerly bought up for ten or eleven half-crowns apiece, instead of at their nominal worth of twenty-one shillings, and the actual value of half-a-crown was hardly more than eighteenpence. Serious loss and inconvenience were thus experienced by retail purchasers at home; but as the clipped money was current in England, the mischief to them was not quite so apparent as to the traders with foreign countries. In the foreign markets, of course, the coin was only taken at its true value, and all imported goods were proportionately enhanced in price, or enhanced in even greater proportion, as the merchants were careful to indemnify themselves not only for their losses by exchange, but also for the trouble and risk to which they were exposed.

That was the state to which affairs had come when William the Third ascended the throne, and, though the gradual growth of the evil had rendered the public strangely apathetic about it, or reckless under despair of obtaining any remedy, a few clear-headed men insisted upon a remedy being found without delay.

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Foremost among these was Locke. "From the first year of his return into England," said Lady Masham, "when nobody else appeared sensible of this matter that is, nobody else among Lady Masham's acquaintance, -"he was very much troubled concerning it, and on talking on the subject of our public affairs, he has often said to me, that we had one evil which nobody complained of, that was more surely ruinous than many others with which we were daily frightened, and that, if that unminded leak in our vessel were not timely looked after, we should infallibly sink, though all the rest were ever so safe.' And when, at my lodgings in London, the company there, finding him often afflicted about a matter which nobody else took any notice of, have rallied him apon this uneasiness as being a visionary trouble, he has more than once replied, 'We might laugh at it, but it would not be long before we should want money to send our servants to market with for bread and meat '-which was so true, five or six years after, that there was not a family in England who did not find this a difficulty.'

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Locke not only insisted among his friends upon the serious embarrassments that must ensue from a perpetuation of this state of things; he also showed the need of reform in the letter or letters that furnished the substance of the second part of his 'Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money.' Here, however, he was most anxious to protest against the very mischievous schemes of those who favoured a change which, instead of reforming, would only increase the evil. Lady Masham erred in saying that he was the only man who was conscious of the

1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5.

existence of this evil. There were many who clamoured, in language that almost drowned his sober arguments, for its redress; and he felt it to be primarily incumbent upon him to expose their fallacies. His originality was chiefly shown in his successful doing of this.

Their proposal was, not that the old depreciated coin should be all called in, and be no longer recognised as legal tender, being replaced by so much new money, of proper value, as was absolutely necessary, and that thus the currency of the country should be brought to its proper level, but that the new money should be "raised " in nominal value, so as to force a depreciated currency upon the country by weight of law. "I hear a talk up and down," Locke said, "of raising our money' as a means to retain our wealth, and keep our money from being carried away. I wish those that use the phrase of 'raising our money' had some clear notion annexed to it, and that then they would examine whether, that being true, it would at all serve those ends for which it is proposed. The 'raising of money' signifies one of these two things: either raising the value of our money or raising the denomination of our coin. The raising of the value of money or anything else is nothing but the making a less quantity of it exchange for any other thing than would have been taken for it before. For example, if five shillings will exchange for, or, as we call it, buy a bushel of wheat, if you can make four shillings buy another bushel of the same wheat, it is plain the value of your money is raised, in respect of wheat, one-fifth. But nothing can raise or fall the value of your money but the proportion of its plenty or scarcity, in proportion to the plenty, scarcity, or vent of any other commodity with which you compare it, or for which you would exchange it. And thus silver,

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which makes the intrinsic value of money compared with itself, under any stamp or denomination of the same or different countries, cannot be raised. For an ounce of silver, whether in pence, groats, or crown-pieces, stivers, or ducatoons, or in bullion, is, and always eternally will be, of equal value to any other ounce of silver, under what stamp or denomination soever, unless it can be shown that any stamp can add any new or better qualities to one parcel of silver which another parcel of silver wants. All then that can be done is only to alter the denomination, and call that a crown now which before by the law was but a part of a crown." Locke showed that it was this which, under specious phrases, the advocates of "raising our money "wanted to do, and that, in plain terms, it was merely a scheme for defrauding of a shilling the recipient of every crown-piece at its nominal value. The fraud, however, he pointed out, would soon be detected, and then things would be just as bad as before, if not worse. "For 'tis silver, not names, that pays debts and purchases commodities.” 2

This view, which no one now would venture to contradict, was insisted upon by Locke at some length and with remarkable vigour and clearness of argument. He had to wait more than four years before his warnings and expositions were heeded; but it is important for us to bear in mind that almost immediately after his return to England he not only insisted upon the uselessness of any attempts to fix the rate of interest by law, but also was among the first to urge the necessity of effecting a thorough reform of the currency, and apparently the first, and certainly the boldest, to expose the worthlessness. and dishonesty of any effort to reform it by legalising a 2 Ibid., p. 145.

1 'Some Considerations,' etc., pp. 133–135.

currency of greater nominal value than the actual value of the metal employed in it. His arguments worked slowly, but, as we shall see, they had an excellent effect on public opinion, and ultimately on the action of the legislature. "I know of none," wrote Lady Masham, after the good work had been done, and after his death, "but think that that was a service to his country for which he merits even a public monument to immortalise the memory thereof. And I am farther sure that what loss our nation suffered by the slowness with which men were made sensible what must be the remedy to our diseases in the debasing and clipping of our coin might, had he been hearkened to, have had a much easier cure.'

" 1

Soon after his return to England, Locke addressed to the king a petition, part of which has already been quoted, asking for redress of the great injury and greater insult to which he had been subjected in his expulsion from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1684. "Your petitioner," he said in the last sentence of this document, "humbly prays that your majesty, being visitor of the said college, and having power by your immediate command to rectify what you find amiss there, would, out of your great justice and goodness, be graciously pleased to direct the dean and chapter of the said college to restore your petitioner to his student's place, together with all things belonging unto it which he formerly enjoyed in the said college." 2

1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5.

2 Lord King, p. 176. I do not find the original of this petition among the State Papers; but Locke's draft of it is extant.

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