exports, and in 1582 the states, having consulted as to the condition of the coinage, strongly advised a renewal of the prohibition of the export of coin, especially by the Italians. This advice was adopted in the Reichstag of Augsburg, which met seventeen days later, 20th September 1582. The preamble of the Act then and there passed speaks of the export of a good portion of the native currency, and of the unmeasured rise of prices, coupled with the circulation of forbidden foreign specie, large and small.
This resolution of the Reichstag was followed by the enacting of the Mint edict of 10th December 1582. It proved as futile as any of the others; and two years later, July 1584, the deputies of the three circles of Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria complained that within the four years immediately preceding several millions had left the country by way of the Rhine provinces for the Netherlands, very little going to Italy by comparison.
On this representation another useless edict was issued by the Emperor Rudolph II., and in the following year the merchants at Frankfort Fair found themselves obliged to agree upon a tariff of ducats and Reichs-thalers. The Philipps-thaler was put at eighty-two kreutzers, and the Reichs-thaler, which, by Page 102 the Imperial Mint edict still nominally in force, should have been at sixty-eight kreutzers, was put at seventy-four. This arrangement of the merchants established a ratio between