Et. 63.

the country, reckoned to be worth about 4,000,000l., was actually worth but little over 2,000,000l. All the new milled money that issued from the mint, he alleged, was hoarded up or melted down for exportation; clipped silver coins alone were in circulation, and the best of these were being constantly bought up at the rate of as many as thirty shillings to the golden guinea, so that the remaining coins were becoming worse and worse, and, besides all the immense damage done to foreign trade, local trade was growing every day more and more difficult. "In consequence of the vitiating, diminishing and counterfeiting of the current moneys, it is come to pass that great contentions do daily arise. amongst the king's subjects in fairs, markets, shops and other places throughout the kingdom, about the passing and refusing of the same, to the great disturbance of the public peace. Many bargains, doings and dealings are totally prevented and laid aside, which lessens trade in general. 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 guineas at a high rate, or in clipped or bad moneys, they set the price of their goods accordingly, which I think has been one great cause of raising the price not only of merchandises, but even of edibles and other necessaries for the sustenance of the common people, to their great grievance. The receipt and collection of the public taxes, revenues, and debts, as well as of private men's incomes, are extremely retarded, so that there were never so many bonds given and lying unsatisfied at the custom houses, or so vast an arrear of excises. And as for the land-tax, your lordships know how far 'tis affected with the bad moneys by the many complaints

transmitted daily from the commissioners, receivers and collectors thereof."1

Lowndes, however, was not satisfied with merely reporting upon the state of the currency. He entitled his document An Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins;' imported into it all the arguments he could bring together in favour of such an adulteration of the coinage as would put into a crown-piece only four shillings' worth of silver, and, a few days before the meeting of the new parliament, issued this more monstrous proposal than any that Locke had hitherto had to condemn in the form of a state paper; apparently printing and publishing it before presenting it to the lords justices, and, in a note on the last page, suggesting that " any persons who have considered an affair of this nature" should "communicate their thoughts for rendering the design here aimed at more perfect or agreeable to the public service."

During the first fortnight or so of November Locke was in constant communication with Montagu and Somers, and perhaps with some other members of the government, discussing the terms of the proposal to be submitted to parliament. They were all agreed as to the madness of any attempt to adulterate the coinage: of the folly and dishonesty of such a proceeding Locke had quite convinced his associates. They were also agreed as to the necessity of calling in the clipped money, and rendering its use, after a short time, illegal, as otherwise the new money would certainly be at once, as heretofore, either hoarded up or melted down or exported. But who was to

1 Lowndes; A Report containing an Essay for the Amendment of the Silver Coins' (1695), pp. 106–116.

2 Ibid. p. 160.

bear the loss consequent on the change, which Lowndes estimated at 2,000,000l., and Locke at the more moderate sum of 1,200,000l.? If it fell upon the individuals who held the bad money, there would be universal discontent, and the government would come into utter disfavour, which the king would largely share. If it fell on the exchequer, there would be serious difficulty in obtaining the money, the resources of the crown having as yet by no means recovered from the bankruptcy inherited from the later Stuarts. How and when, moreover, should the new money be substituted for the old? The mint could not be put to work without the sanction of an act of parliament, and when that was obtained, with its limited resources, it would necessarily require a considerable time for completion of the work. If an early day were fixed for suppression of the old money, the new money would not be ready to replace it. If a distant day were fixed, the clippers would make a rich harvest in the interval. Every hour would add to the public loss, and the whole trade of the country would be hopelessly deranged.

Those were some of the difficulties through which Locke was helping to guide his friends when Lowndes's essay was published. Lowndes had shown him this essay in manuscript. "Before it was laid before those great persons to whom it was afterwards submitted," Locke wrote, "he did me the favour to show it to me, and made me the compliment to ask me my opinion of it. Though we had some short discourse on the subject, yet the multiplicity of his business whilst I staid in town, and my health, which soon after forced me out of it, allowed us not an occasion to debate any one point thoroughly and bring it to an issue. Before I returned to town, his book

was in the press, and finished before I had an opportunity to see Mr. Lowndes again. And here he laid a new obligation on me, not only in giving me one of them, but telling me, when I received it from his hands, that it was the first he had parted with to anybody."1 Locke told his friends the nature of the essay; but, for all that, when it was published, it would seem that they were amazed by its audacity. "You will easily see," Somers wrote in haste to Locke, "by the book which was put in my hand last night, and by the title of a report which it bears, as well as by the advertisement at the end of it, that you were in the right when you said that the alteration of the standard was the thing aimed at. The challenge at the end, if you will allow me to say so, is in some sort directed to you. The proposition which you and I discoursed upon yesterday is endeavoured to be represented impracticable. The passing of money by weight is said to be ridiculous, at least in little payments. There is no encouragement proposed to invite people to bring the clipped money into the mint, so that it will be melted down to be transported; and whilst this is doing, nothing will be left to carry on commerce, for no one will bring out his guineas to part with them for twenty shillings, when he paid thirty shillings for them so lately. These " -and some others-" as I remember, are the objections made use of; and I doubt not but you will, without great difficulty, help us with some expedients for them. I believe it an easier task than to remove what I see is so fixed, the project of alteration of the standard."2

Locke readily took up the challenge thrown to him,

1 Further Considerations concerning Raising the Value of Money' (1695), Preface.

2 Lord King, p. 241; Somers to Locke, Nov., 1695.

not only by Lowndes, but also by Somers, who probably spoke for Montagu as well as for himself. He concerned himself, however, not so much with the details of the reform which, difficult as they were, Somers thought comparatively easy, as with the "fixed project of alteration of the standard," that is, of the mischievous depreciation of the currency, which Lowndes, as representative of a number of crafty schemers and ignorant theorists, himself belonging only to the latter class, had now set before the country with far more authority and vigour of argument than any of the other score of pamphleteers, writing to the same effect, could pretend to.

He did not do this later work in London. On the 16th of November, a few days after the appearance of Lowndes's essay, he hurried down to Oates on hearing of Mrs. Cudworth's sudden death, and his own ill-health detained him there. He had only time to promise that he would write an answer to the essay, and this he did with such rapidity as should have spared him the "repeated intimations and instances, not without some reproaches for his backwardness," which, as he said, came to him from London.' His own essay, filling more than a hundred pages, was written, submitted to the lords justices, and printed and published at their request, before the end of December, that is, in barely more than a month from the time when it was begun. It was not circulated among members of parliament soon enough to prepare them for Montagu's re-coinage bill; but it was able to help that bill, in a modified form, to become law.

Locke began his essay with a very complete and lucid exposition of the

1 Further Considerations,' etc., Preface.

Ibid., dedication to Sir John Somers.