shillings. This doctrine, revived again during the last commercial crisis in England and even voiced in Parliament in two separate reports attached to the report of the select Committee on the Bank Acts sitting in July, 1858, dates from the end of the seventeenth century.
At the time of the accession of William III., the English mint-price of an ounce of silver was 5s. 2d., or 1-62 of an ounce of silver was equal to a penny; 12 of these pence were called a shilling. According to that standard, a piece of silver weighing, say, 6 ounces, would be coined into thirty-one coins, each called a shilling. But the market price of an ounce of silver rose above its mint price, from 5s. 2d. to 6s. 3d., or, in order to buy an ounce of silver bullion 6s. 3d. had to be paid. How could the market 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