had to be done was to keep them there. The advantage which was to be derived from a trade in bullion, and from an understanding of the effects of differently-prevailing ratios in different countries, was known only to the Jew and the Italian. They plied their trade in secret, and the legislator was only apprised of the result by suddenly finding a slipping away and dearth of coinage. Then the legislator altered the tariff, and gradually rose to the conception of the ratio as underlying this process of seduction. Then, as a further defence of a particular class of coins, he imposed a limitation on the tender of such, so as to prevent bullion operations on it. This limitation was the first development of a law of tender. Throughout, from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, both gold and silver had been actually employed in European commerce without any idea either of declaring or of restricting the tender, whether of the one or the other.
The final outcome of the application of the law of tender was the development of the modern monometallic system—a system in which alone lay the safeguard against the operation of the bullionist. It was only at the close of the eighteenth century that England evolved this system and flung away the Page x last remains of that mediæval ignorance which had brought with