May). Two months later it was found that so serious an export of good coinage was ensuing that "our kingdom would be entirely stripped of good currency, to our great damage, etc." A proclamation was accordingly issued (28th June 1636) attempting to regulate the course of exchange. The effort was vain, and on the following 22nd September the ratio was suddenly and violently altered to 15.36.2
A glance at the ratio prevalent in other countries will show how masterful was this act of France, but it carried with it the seeds of its own punishment. Such is the nature of the bimetallic law that any overshooting of the ratio, on no matter which side,—in favour of silver or in favour of gold,—establishes a differentiation, and the differentiation at once gives to the one metal a fulcrum or lever point—a purchasing power—against the other, and the undervalued metal, whichever it is, at once tends to disappear. Four years after this autocratic measure of France, it was found that her currency was in so depreciated a state, through exchange, that the only pieces current were lacking one-third of their full weight.
The recoinage established by her proclamation of 31st March 1640, which established the new louis d'or, was intended as a complete and permanent remedy, and it may reasonably claim the praise of having effected so much. The alteration of the Page 92 ratio established in 1640-41 by