reason was explicitly stated to be the increase in the value of gold during several preceding years—an increase which had banished or detained gold from the French Mint and even from France.
Writing in 1785, the minister, Calonne, who proposed and executed the recoinage in that year, Page 172 spoke thus:—
"In 1726 the legal ratio was fixed in France at 14 marks 5 oz. of silver, to a mark of gold, and that which proves with how much sagacity this point was seized is the fact that during a long course of years France retained in her circulating medium a sufficiently large proportion of each metal. Nevertheless, her gold gradually became less common, and for some years this scarcity has rapidly increased, and this precisely because its legal value has always remained the same, while its metallic value has increased from year to year."
He estimated the amount of livres in louis d'or existing in the country at the time of the recoinage, 1785, as 650 million livres, which amounted to only a half of the total coinage (1300 million livres) of the period 1726-85. What seems to have determined Calonne to adopt 15 1⁄2 was the fact that Spain had the legal ratio of 16, and that there was a probability that, in future, gold would rise in value. As for the market price, he admits that it was only 15.08-15.12 in 1785. The recoinage, therefore, brought a profit of 7,255,216 livres to the King's purse, and a profit of 21,600,000 livres to the holders of the old louis d'or.
His policy