Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/239

Rh many other nations, and by the Spaniards, whose base or black money, there so called, if forbidden, would, for want of other monies to supply the occasions of that nation at home, whilst they paid their armies and hired soldiers abroad with better money, would be the utter and irrecoverable ruin of that king and people.

When every man may acknowledge it to be a sadly experimented truth that by the unlawful transport of our money as frequently, if not more, than merchandize and commodities, a more than 20 years warrs and taxes unbecoming, vast and luxurious expences at home, and sending our moneys into foreign parts to purchase vanities not only for the nobility, gentry, but our citizens, mechanics, artisans, and common and ordinary servants, our England and almost all sorts of the people in it, are so impoverished and ruined as they have not wherewithall to pay their debts, rents, or taxes, or to help to maintain an army to defend their king, country, children and posterity, and resist insulting and provoking neighbour enemies, that if the debating of our coin upon some of our princes occasions had done any hurt to some particular persons, yet the good it generally brought did greatly overbalance it, and that it being in some years after recalled and reduced, all the harm it did was to relieve the present necessities with a far less damage than the abating or altering the value of the money would have enforced upon it.

That of evills the less are to be chosen, that the not having of money to repell the enemy, or being subdued for want of it, will allways be found to be more prejudiciall than any imaginary money can be to prevent it, that all the ways, but this of our forefathers, have been by our princes great occasions for their and our preservation worn out and tired, and can no more be trodden: and that when the people are willing, as they ought, to furnish their sovereign's necessary and importunate occasions, and have no money nor can borrow any to do it.