Further Considerations [16]
in the quantity? which is all one as to say, that a Penny, or thereabouts, shall make amends for fifteen Pence taken away. Another way to recommend his New Coin, to those who shall receive it instead of the present weightier Coin, he tells them, p. 77. it will pay as much Debt and purchase as much Commodities as our present Money, which is One fifth heavier: What he says of Debts is true. But yet I would have it well considered by our English Gentlemen, that tho' Creditors will lose One fifth of their Principal and Use, and Landlords will lose one fifth of their Income, yet the Debtors and Tenants will not get it. It will be asked, Who then will get it? Those, I say, and those only who have great Sums of weighty Money (whereof one sees not a piece now in Payments) hoarded up by them, will get by it. To those by the proposed change of our Money will be an increase of one fifth added to their Riches, paid out of the Pockets of the rest of the Nation. For what these men received for Four Shillings, they will pay again for Five. This weighty Money hoarded up, Mr. Lowndes, p. 105 computes at One Million and Six hundred thousand Pounds. So that by raising our Money one fifth, there will Three hundred and twenty thousand Pound be given to those who have hoarded up our weighty Money; which hoarding up of Money is thought by many to have no other merit in it than the prejudicing our Trade and publick Affairs, and increasing our necessities, by keeping so great a part of our Money from coming abroad, at a time when there was so great need of it. If the Sum of unclip'd Money in the Nation, be as some suppose, much greater; then there will by this contrivance of the raising our Coin, be given to these rich Hoarders, much above the aforesaid Sum of Three hundred and twenty thousand Pounds of our present Money. No body else, but these Hoarders, can get a Farthing by this proposed change of our Coin; unless Men in Debt have Plate by them, which they will Coin to pay their Debts. Those too, I must confess, will get One fifth by all the Plate of their own, which they shall Coin and pay Debts with; valuing their Plate at Bullion: But if they shall consider the fashion of their Plate, what that cost when they bought it, and the fashion that new Plate will cost them, if they intend ever to have Plate again, they will find this One fifth seeming present profit in Coining their Plate to pay their Debts, amount to little or nothing at all. No body then but the Hoarders will get by this Twenty per Cent. And I challenge any one to shew how any body else (but that little in the case of Plate Coin'd to pay Debts) shall get a Farthing by it. It seems to promise fairest to the Debtors; but to them too it will amount to nothing. For he that takes up Money to pay his Debts, will receive this new Money, and pay it again at the same rate he received it, just as he does now our present Coin, without any profit at all. And though Commodities (as is natural) shall be raised in proportion to the lessening of the Money, no body will get by that, any more than they do now, when all things are grown dearer. Only he that is bound up by contract to receive any Sum under such a denomination of Pounds, Shillings and Pence, will find his loss sensibly when he goes to buy Commodities, and make new Bargains. The Markets and the Shops will soon convince him, that his Money, which is One fifth lighter, is also one fifth worse; when he must pay twenty per Cent. more for all the Commodities he buys with the Money of the new Foot, than if he bought it with the present Coin. This Mr. Lowndes himself will not deny, when he calls to mind what he himself, speaking of the inconveniences we suffer by our clip'd Money, says, p. 115. Persons before they conclude in any bargains, are necessitated first to settle the price or value of the very Money they are to receive for their Goods; And if it be in clip'd or bad Money, they set the price of their Goods accordingly: Which I think has been one great cause of raising the price, not only of Merchandizes, but even of Edibles,