natural appreciation of the metals. In England our earliest gold coin weighed 128 4⁄7 grains, and was tariffed at 6s. 8d. In 1489, 80 grains of gold were equivalent to the same, 6s. 8d.—a reduction of 37.94 per cent. Within the same period the weight of the silver penny sank from 22 to 12 troy grains, a reduction of 45.45 per cent. Eliminating cases of arbitrary debasement, a rough average for the period might fairly give 40 per cent. of depreciation through the two centuries.
The case need hardly be laboured statistically, for the legislative history of all the countries forming the circle of commercial Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnesses this general downward Page 16 movement—this appreciation and restriction of currency—in grim and unmistakable manner; and it is the expression of this general movement in their legislations that gives the test and measure of the earliest bimetallic troubles of Europe. In many ways the problem before the various Governments was a more difficult one than that which besets the modern world. There was, for instance, nothing like an equal and generally recognised ratio of value between gold and silver prevailing at any one single point of time. At one and the same date a ratio of 7 or 8 to 1 prevailed in the Moorish parts of Spain, and 12 to 1 in the Christian parts (the kingdom of Castile). Similarly, at a later period, in 1474, the ratio in England was 11.15, in Germany 11.12, and in France 11.00, in Italy 10.58, and in Spain 9.82.
The natural result of such a state of chaos, if it had been permitted to work itself out unhindered, would have been arbitrage transactions of such a nature—a flux and reflux of the European currencies so perpetual—as would have induced a yearly and universal bankruptcy. In spite of frantic efforts on the part of ruler after ruler, such results did partially come about, and they sufficiently account both for the distraction of Governments and the hatred universally visited upon the Jew in the Middle Ages. The measures which were adopted by the various States to counteract this invisible, insidious, and wasting process, partake of the