Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/604

586 average of the pieces in circulation amounted to nearly or quite 50 per cent. The most rigorous and cruel laws were passed, but they were ineffectual, and, while scores of miserable wretches were dangling from the gibbets, clipping was as rife as ever.

Clipping is here referred to at some length, because it differs from other degradations of coinage only in respect to the parties by whom it is done. It is reducing the value of coin without public authority, and is the least mischievous of the two forms, because, as no one is compelled to take clipped coins, the loss is forced on no one.

The first effort to correct the evils which had thus arisen was, by furnishing a large supply of fresh, honest, milled coins. The politicians of that day believed that, if the people were given plenty of new and good money, it would soon displace the old; and so the mints were run to their utmost capacity, but the new coins vanished from sight as fast as they were put ont. Gresham's law, that "bad money drives out good money, but that good money cannot drive out bad money," although not then formulated, worked its inevitable result. The statesmen marveled that men would not pay 12 ounces of silver when 10 could be made to serve the purpose, but they persistently refused to do so. By the time of William III., the necessity of resorting to some measures which should be effectual was generally felt.

It was evident to all that the old coinage must in some way be supplanted by a new, but the manner in which this should be done was warmly disputed. Mr. William Lowndes, then Secretary of the Treasury, was ordered to make a report and did so, recommending that the standard of the new coin should be depreciated to the level of the trash in circulation, by making the new shilling worth nine-pence or thereabouts. He asserted, and attempted to prove, "that making the pieces less, or ordaining the respective pieces (of the present weight) to be current at a higher rate, might equally raise the value of silver in our coins;" and seriously argued that, if an ounce of silver were but cut up finer, other nations would be induced to sell their products for a smaller number of ounces. He had a considerable following, composed, Macaulay says, "partly of dull men who really believed what he told them, and partly of shrewd men who were perfectly willing to be authorized by law to pay a hundred pounds with eighty"—a description which fits with sufficient accuracy the advocates of the Bland Bill.

Lowndes's fallacies were exposed with great ability by Locke, and fortunately wiser counsels prevailed. The old standard was maintained in the new issues, and the clipped coins were called in, the loss falling, as it should do, on the public at large. Space forbids the introduction here of the arguments by which this wise course was sustained. The controversy is interesting and instructive, and deserves attention, for it was revived 116 years later when Bank-of-England