Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A49842
|
Observations concerning money and coin and especially those of England
|
Layton, Henry, 1622-1705.
|
1697
(1697)
|
Wing L755B; Wing O94_CANCELLED; ESTC R43364
|
50,023
|
54
|
palpable Mistake Mr. Lownds advises Charitably that the Subjects generally should share in the Losses of those who suffer by Clipt-Money lying upon their hands No says our Author but let every particular bear his own loss singly why so Because says he they have profited by having it in their hands which is a very wild and random Assertion intending none but gaining Tradesmen had such Whereas Creditors for their Debts and Landlords for their Rents have a great or the greatest share of that sort of Money upon their hands Pag. 106. But he is for stopping Clipt Money speedily and come of it what will Well let it be so and then let it go by Weight at the rate and value of a Noble per Ounce that is of due fineness Pag. 108. Whatsoever his Premises have been he is of full Opinion That King Charles's Mill'd Money should still be the Standard which shall not be at all alter'd in Fineness Weight or Value I doubt not but that he was to be of that Opinion at his beginning to Write and before it if he have well maintain'd and prov'd it upon what is here said in answer to him shall be left to the Judgment and Sentence of those who will be at the trouble of Reading and Examining our Accounts I proceed to consider and examine one of the Letters before-mentioned written in maintenance of our Author 's former Opinion and generally suppos'd to be written by the same Hand The flourish of his Preface I pass as bare words of no proof or real Import at all In his Progress or Dialogue he says You have now Forty or Fifty Thousand Pounds of Mill'd-Money in your hands kept in hope to make an advantage by passing 5 s. for 6 s. it seems this is but a bare and very fallacious Insinuation not able to perswade me to a Belief that any Man in England ever had such a Sum of that sort of Money by him and I strongly suspect that if he were put to name a Man who hath or then had 5000 l. of that sort of Money by him and prove the truth of his Assertion to use his own words he would be baffled in it and not be able to make out the truth of it Men could not receive any Money of that sort in the last four or perhaps five Years his Sum of 50000 l. at 6 per Cent. Interest comes to 3000 l. per Annum whence the Hoarder of so much Money was like to be a loser of 3000 l. per Annum so many Years that any Man would or did so Credat judaeus Apella Those who do lay up Money do probably lay up of the best sort that they have and divers have laid up Money in prospect of a Purchase a Daughter's Portion or the like occasions Sums competent but that Men laid by them such great Sums at loss of Interest for divers Years I do not believe but demand of him some Instance or proof of it And that ever any Man in England yet did lay up that Money with intent to gain by the raising our Values of Money I assure my self he never can prove because I believe it to be utterly untrue and yet what Money Men may now have by them of that sort they may and likely do reserve it still by them in expectation of Gain to be made by giving Weight for Weight of the heavy Money in exchange for the new and lighter Money and such exchange our Author will have to be no Robbery for he constantly places all the Value of Money in the Weight of it and if 80 l. of the old Money weigh as much or more than an 100 l. of the new he that gives such 100 for such 80 will by our Author's Rules be the gainer by the exchange and both by his Rules and my Rules he who gives the 100 l. for the 80 l. intending to vend or use the Money in Foreign Parts will be a considerable gainer by this exchange and he who takes 100 l. for 80. if he use the Money at home will be a considerable gainer also yea and a greater gainer than the other Party although he have an over-weight of Silver in his exchange And as for his Debtor of a 1000 l. he shall pay it as he took it in lawful Money of England If he borrow it to pay with he cannot gain or save a Penny but will find the new Money as hard to get as the old was Nor can he gain or save any other way than by carrying Silver into the Mint and Coining it which Debtors are not like to be in a condition to do He says Foreigners do not carry away our Money by Stealth or Witchcraft true but he says they take it for their Debt and Money that we owe them perhaps some may be taken so but they take it mostly in exchange for their Commodities or buy it up for Profit and yet give five or sometimes ten in the Hundred more than the ordinary price to put it off still at greater Profit in those Countries to which they carry it He says we must pay our Foreign Debts not in our accounts of Money but theirs and that is true and therefore If we make our Money lighter we must make our Payment out by the more Pieces I have always allow'd that raising our Values doth not help us amongst Foreigners but only in our home Trades and to keep Men from carrying our Money away for the Profit which they make by the overweightiness of it in comparison with other Countries And I say that by raising our Money neither our selves nor any others need be or will be Cheated To Foreigners it will be no hindrance but to our Kingdom very beneficial Pag. 2. He discovers himself by reciting his former Rules viz. that the King's Image and Superscription adds nothing no Power to our Money but is only a testimony of the Weight and Fineness of it and it is only those which give the Value to Money not the King's Image or Authority This I have past and must here pass for a very gross mistake And I say by King James's Authority in Ireland his Brass stamp'd to go for 2 s. 6 d. made it go there at that value during that Authority And if our King and Government shall stamp a piece of Silver and appoint it to bear the value of a Guinea and be current at that rate it must and ought to pass as currently as now the Gold Pieces do without refusal and no Man doth or can see the contrary of this but is grosly Ignorant and unknowing in the Laws and Customs of our Nation Next he says The best way for using Money would be by Grains which he calls Drams Penny-weights Ounces and Pounds without any Image or Superscription at all As if he desir'd to cut off the Power of the King and Supream Authority in the raising and falling of our Money See how far Men may be drawn out of the right
way by the infatuating Affection which they may bear to a Diana whose Cause they have undertaken to promote Our stamp'd Money hath its Weight and Fineness appointed as well as its Value and may be weighed and tried as the old Talents and denarii might but then also Caesar's Image and Superscription made their current Coin he says we value Foreign Money only by its Weight and Fineness and that is true And we know and find that they do so by ours and therefore desire it But our own Money in our own Country hath always been and I hope shall ever continue under the disposal of our Government and the Authority and Stamp thereof notwithstanding his innovating and fluctuating Inventions for serving of a present turn Next he puts Cases of Foreign Trade whose Countries will not submit to Changes in the Values of our Money I say If our Money be the old heavy they covet it and will sell for fewer Pieces of it or will buy it to carry away the newer lighter Money they cannot reasonably desire to carry away being intended to be made rather at a losing Truck and Value This will make them chuse to carry away their Truck rather in Commodities than Money Whereas for many Years last past their Practice hath been quite contrary And there is no doubt but that if we raise the Value of our Money or diminish its Weight Foreigners will sute us with their Prices accordingly and from such Trading no Man can expect benefit by the raising the Value of our Money nor ever pretended to do it so as he might well have spared his Argnment thereupon and what he says after of cheating the King the Debtors he should have said Creditors Landlords and Seamen to the best of my Understanding hath much boldness and very little Truth in it But next he comes to particular Instances and there indeed he touches our Sore at the Quick and seems to reach the very bottom of it He says If the King should receive six millions in Revenue I say If he should receive so much it will make our case much the harder And I had rather have it put If the King should receive five millions in Yearly Revenue and I surmise the latter to be the more likely Computation and before this can be rightly determined it seems necessary that as near a computation of it should be made known as can be procured If our Coin be required to be lightned by a fifth part or more it must fall under mens Consideration that the King 's whole Revenue must fall in reality to four parts of five so as if before the Change it was five millions now it will be reduc'd to four whence the King should become loser of a whole Million of Money every Year This the Court and the Men of State had great reason to obviate and prevent by all the means which lay in their Power and not to suffer the King to be trickt of so great a Revenue by the unlucky blast of such a side Wind by a Trick which whether we shall call it Country and Ignorant or Subtile and Dangerous doth not yet clearly appear but a dangerous effect must needs have followed upon so great a failure if the same had crudely proceeded without raising the King some certain and hnown or apparently likely recompence or compensation in another way we should never have undergone our present Pressures and Payments with the little murmur that we do if we were not convinc'd that the War with France is absolutely necessary for our Preservation and Peace Nor would our Parliament we hope have consented to such heavy Taxes if they had not found all that Money absolutely necessary for the support of our present War and rebus sic stantibus Men cannot pull off such a Sum as a Million from the maintenance of this War without cutting off as it were a limb or quarter from the main Body of it to the great endangering of the very Vitals and hazard of its whole Success We will not therefore desire or suffer so great a Sum to be cut off from the maintenance of our present War nor can we suffer the impolitick and very evil management of our Money and the grievous Groans and Afflictions of all sorts of People thereupon bardly any longer the reducing Guineas to a Price that even puts them down and causes them to be Exported faster than ever they were Imported and at the same time forbidding Clip'd-Money without providing new in the room of it I desire to know what could be worse contrived or more unlucky than these Junctures concerning Money which appear more and more grievous every day we hope God will provide For amongst Men the Case looks very dangerous and we cannot yet see to the end of it Our Author says Creditors Servants Soldiers Seamen all must lose by the lightning of our Money Sed non ego credulus illi for I think none of them will lose a Penny by it Pag. 3. He puts a Question to which I answer That the more Commodities we sell to Strangers for this Money although measur'd at a less weight of Silver the more Money is brought into the Kingdom instead of carrying it out which hath been too long used amongst us Next another case of a Dutch sending to London 5000 l. in Silver and getting it Coined there into 6000 l. I say this would bring so much Dutch Silver into the Kingdom and their most gainful Trade with us will be made by sending us still more Silver which will then go at an higher rate here than perhaps it may in Holland as was lately the case of our Guineas Next he says that no Nation ever raised their Money but it was to their prejudice And that the Dutch never did nor ever will raise their Money both no more than bold Assertions neither proved nor provable It would not have been often and usually practiced in our Nation if our Ancestors had not found it both beneficial and necessary And the Romans found great benefit both by lightning the Weights of their Brass Money and by increasing the value of Silver Deniers And as to the Dutch they have no fine Silver Money of their own Coining but only course adulterate Money which none can carry into other Countries but to their own very great loss and damage But their great Trades are driven all in Foreign Coin and vast quantities of our English Money hath been used there to that purpose gainfully both by Trading and by Clipping vitiis modis not regarding the manner so as the suavis odor lucri came amongst them To his Secondly I say He proceeds upon his own devised but a very fallacious Rule viz. That the Stamp and Authority of State neither doth nor can work any real change in the value or currency of Money amongst us the contrary of which is true and proved by the two Cases of Guineas and Clip'd Money at this time and by