apparent rise of foreign prices proportioned to the extent of the debasement. This at once unsettles internal or home trade prices, and they rise to the same level, but with such inequality of motion as may happen to follow from friction, local ignorance, want of communication, or from the intricacies of trade. The inequality of exchange-coinage rates which results from this is the bullionist's or the financier's opportunity, and swiftly and invisibly the good species—or any, bad or good, upon which any differential profit can be had—disappear from circulation. The consequence is that the rising prices which instituted the process are no longer accompanied by an expanding or increasing volume of currency, but, on the contrary, with an enormous decrease in the total of acceptable or efficient currency. Hence come decay of trade, and ruin of town and country.
This is no paper, a priori argument. It is the patent unmistakable statement of history and fact.
The staple trade of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was woollen. Coventry was one of the considerable seats of the industry, and known as a flourishing and wealthy town. In the Page 124 third year of Edward VI.—the time when this debasement of our coinage reached the lowest point—its trade was gone, and its population had sunk to 3000, "whereas within memory there had been 15,000."
In the extraordinary "Dialogue concerning the common weal of this realm of England,"