price of an ounce of silver rise above its mint price, when the mint price is merely a reckoning name for aliquot parts of an ounce of silver? The riddle was easily solved. Out of £5,600,000 of silver money which was in circulation at that time, four millions were worn out, clipped and debased. A trial disclosed that £57,000 of silver which were supposed to weigh 220,000 ounces, weighed only 141,000 ounces. The mint went on coining according to the same standard, but light-weighted shillings in actual circulation represented smaller parts of an ounce than their name implied. Hence, a greater quantity of these light-weighted shillings had to be paid in the market for an ounce of silver bullion. When a general recoinage was decided upon in consequence of the derangement that had been produced, LOWNDES, the Secretary of the Treasury, declared that the value of an ounce of silver had risen and therefore it must henceforth be coined into 6s. 3d. instead of into 5s. 2d. as heretofore. His argument practically amounted to the assertion that the rise in the value of the ounce caused a fall in the value of its aliquot parts. His false theory, however, served merely as an embellishment for a just, practical purpose. The government debts were contracted in light shillings, were they to be paid in heavy ones? Instead of saying pay back four ounces of silver, when you had received nominally five ounces but virtually only four, he said pay back nominally five ounces but reduce the metallic contents to four ounces and call a shilling what you had called four-fifths of a shilling heretofore. Thus Lowndes practically adhered to the metallic weight while theoretically he clung to the reckoning name. His adversaries who clung only to the name and therefore declared the 25 to 50 per cent. lighter shilling to be identical with the full-weight shilling maintained on the contrary that they adhered to the metallic weight.
JOHN LOCKE, who was an advocate of the new bourgeoisie in all forms, the manufacturers against the working classes and paupers, the commercial class against the old fashioned usurers, the financial aristocracy against the state debtors, and who went so far as to prove in