coin. In this particular instance, 1774, the depreciation of silver had been the result of the action of a too high ratio from 1717 onwards; the depreciation of gold was effected in a much less time between 1770 and 1773, simply because the already depreciated state of the silver causing that differentiation of value, which is the bullionist's opportunity, happened to coincide with a natural rise of the value of gold all over the Continent. The result, therefore, of fifty years of bimetallic régime left England with a currency depreciated in both its limbs, in both gold and silver, and as deficient in the quantity current as in the weight of the individual pieces. This is not in keeping with the theory of bimetallism as developed to-day, according to which the transition from one coin to the other would only be made at the point of equation, and the substituted metal would equalise that displaced. This is theory. The facts of the situation in 1774 are not theory but history, and tell a different tale.
"The evil was so great," says Lord Liverpool, "that the Government found it necessary to take this difficult subject into their immediate consideration. On this occasion I addressed a letter to a noble Lord, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, suggesting what appeared to me the proper remedy for this evil. I proposed that, with a view to the general Page 234 reform of the coins of the realm, all the deficient gold coins should in the first place be called in and recoined, and that in future