the currency of the gold coin should be regulated by weight as well as by tale, and that the several pieces should not be legal tender if diminished below a certain weight. Your Majesty was pleased to approve of this advice and to propose to your Parliament, on 13th January 1774, the calling in and recoining of all the deficient gold coins; and the Chancellor of your Exchequer opened the whole of this plan to the House of Commons, who approved of the measure, which was carried into immediate execution without any complaint and with great success. The defects which had previously existed in this species of coins were thereby removed, and the regulation, then established, of weighing the gold coin has been the means of preserving it at nearly the state of perfection to which it was then brought."
The resolutions of the House of Commons on which this recoinage depended were passed on the 10th May 1774. After stating the depreciation existing in the gold coinage the House asserted—(3) that it has been a practice to export and melt down the new and perfect gold coin soon after it is issued for private advantage, to the great detriment of England; (4) that while pieces of gold coin, differing so greatly in weight, are allowed to be current under the same denomination and at the same rate and value, great quantities of the new will continue to be exported and melted down, and, Page 235 and perfect pieces there is reason to apprehend, will be recoined into pieces the most deficient that are allowed