Some Considerations of the Lowering of Interest [45]
their price even beyond the Par of your lessening your Coin. I hear of two inconveniencies complained of, which 'tis proposed by this project to Remedy. The one is, The melting down of our Coin: The other, The carrying away of our Bullion. These are both inconveniencies which, I fear, we lie under: But neither of them will be in the least removed or prevented by the proposed alteration of our Money. 1. It is past doubt that our Money is welted down. The Reason whereof is evidently the cheapness of Coinage. For a Tax on Wine paying the Coinage, the particular Owners pay nothing for it. So that 100 Ounces of Silver Coin'd, comes to the Owner at the same Rate, as 100 Ounces of Standard Silver in Billion. For delivering into the Mint his Silver in Bars, he has the same quantity of Silver delivered out to him again in Coin, without any Charges to him. Whereby, if at any time he has occasion for Bullion, 'tis the same thing to melt down our mill'd Money, as to buy Billion from abroad, or take it in Exchange for other Commodities. Thus our Mint to the only advantage of our Officers, but at the publick cost, Labours in Vain, as will be found. But yet this makes you not have one jot less Money in England, than you would have otherwise; but only makes you Coin that, which otherwise would not have been Coin'd, nor perhaps been brought hither: And being not brought hither by an over-ballance of your Exportation, cannot stay when it is here. It is not any sort of Coinage, does, or can keep your Money here: That wholly and only depends upon the Ballance of your Trade. And had all the Money in king Charles the II. and King James the II. time, been Minted according to this new proposal, this rais'd Money would have been gone as well as the other, and the remainder been no more, nor no less than it is now. Though I doubt not but the Mint would have Coin'd as much of it as it has of our present mill'd Money. The short is this. An over-ballance of Trade with Spain brings you in Bullion; cheap Coinage, when it is here, carries it into the Mint, and Money is made of it; but if your Exportation will not Ballance your Importation in the other parts of your Trade, away must your Silver go again, whether Monied or not Monied. For where Goods do not, Silver must pay for the Commodities you spend. That this is so will appear by the Books of the Mint, where may be seen how much mill'd Money has been Coin'd in the two last Reigns. And in a Paper I have now in my Hands, (supposed written by a Man not wholly ignorant in the Mint) 'tis confessed, That whereas One third of the Current Payments were some time since of mill'd Money, there is not now One twentieth. Gone then it is. But let not any one mistake and think it gone, because in our present Coinage, an Ounce wanting about 16 Grains is denominated a Crown: Or that (as is now proposed) an Ounce wanting about 40 Grains, being Coin'd in one piece, and denominated a Crown, would have stop'd it, or will (if our Money be so alter'd) for the future fix it here. Coin what quantity of Silver you please, in one piece, and give it the denomination of a Crown; when your Money is to go, to pay your Foreign Debts, (or else it will not go out at all) your heavy Money, (i.e. that which is weight according to its Denomination, by the Standard of the Mint) will be that, which will be melted down, or carried away in Coin by the Exporter, whether the pieces of each Species be by the Law bigger or less. For whilst Coinage is wholly paid for by a Tax, whatever your size of Money be, he that has need of Bullion to send beyond Sea, or of Silver to make Plate, need but take mill'd Money, and melt it down, and he has it as cheap, as if it were in pieces of Eight, or other Silver coming from abroad; the Stamp, which so well secures the weight and fineness of the mill'd Money, costing nothing at all. To this perhaps will be said, That if this be the effect of mill'd Money, that it is so apt to be melted down, it were better to return to the old way of Coining by the Hammer. To which I answer by no means.