period already passed in review and modern times. In the method of expressing that ratio, however, there is a remarkable difference. Page 160
With the close of the seventeenth century the advantage of the process of altering the denomination of the coinage, of diminishing the content and reducing the standard of fineness, began to be impugned on theoretic grounds, and in the course of the eighteenth century that process itself fell into disuse. Since that time no Mint or legislative change such as we have hitherto described was made on the expressed value or content of any European coinage. Bearing in mind the twofold importance which was attached to that process of legislative guarding of the currency, this change must be regarded as of vital import. The legislator, from the middle of the fourteenth century, had attempted two things by this mechanism—(1) to follow the general rise of prices, and meet it by reducing the contents of the coins in such proportion as he thought fit; (2) to prevent any disastrous outflow of the precious metals by altering the ratio. The control of the Mint rates of metal-purchase and metal-coinage was, therefore, a matter of importance financially and politically to the nation, and economically to international commerce. In just such measure, therefore, was the entire ceasing of this State control of the mechanism of international exchange and currency a matter of almost incalculable significance in the history of the European monetary system. In the domain of finance it effected a revolution as signal as that produced in the relations of labour to capital by the