tially from other commodities, and that the government stamp upon them, whereby they become coin, cannot materially raise their value. As most of my readers are aware, it has been a favourite device, time out of mind, of unprincipled and impecunious governments to raise the denomination of the coin, or to put a smaller quantity of the precious metals in coins retaining the old denomination, with the view of recruiting an impoverished exchequer. There have, doubtless, been financiers unintelligent enough to suppose that this expedient might enrich the government, while it did no harm to the people. But it requires only a slight amount of reflection to see that all creditors are defrauded exactly in the same proportion as that in which the coin is debased. One lucid passage from Locke's answer to Lowndes may suffice to show the forcible manner in which he presents this truth.

“Raising of coin is but a specious word to deceive the unwary. It only gives the usual denomination of a greater quantity of silver to a less (v. g. calling four grains of silver a penny to-day, when five grains of silver made a penny yesterday), but adds no worth or real value to the silver coin, to make amends for its want of silver. That is impossible to be done. For it is only the quantity of silver in it that is, and eternally will be, the measure of its value. One may as rationally hope to lengthen a foot, by dividing it into fifteen parts instead of twelve and calling them inches, as to increase the value of silver that is in a shilling, by dividing it into fifteen parts instead of twelve and calling them pence. This is all that is done, when a shilling is raised from twelve to fifteen pence."

Lowndes had maintained that "raising the coin," in addition to making up the loss caused by calling in the clipped money, and other advantages, would increase the circulating medium of the country, and so put a stop to the multiplication of hazardous paper-credit and the in

conveniences of bartering. Locke's reply :

Nothing could be better than

"Just as the boy cut his leather into five quarters (as he called them) to cover his ball, when cut into four quarters it fell short, but, after all his pains, as much of his ball lay bare as before; if the quantity of coined silver, employed in England, fall short, the arbitrary denomination of a greater number of pence given to it, or, which is all one, to the several coined pieces of it, will not make it commensurate to the size of our trade or the greatness of our occasions. This is as certain as that, if the quantity of a board, which is to stop a leak of a ship fifteen inches square, be but twelve inches square, it will not be made to do it by being measured by a foot that is divided into fifteen inches, instead of twelve, and so having a larger tale or number of inches in denomination given to it."

The general principle that to depreciate the coinage is to rob the creditor, and that, though you may change the name, you cannot change the thing, was quite as emphatically stated by Petty and North as by Locke. But the value of Locke's tracts consisted in their amplitude of argument and illustration, which left to the unprejudiced reader no alternative but to accept their conclusion. As he himself said in a letter to Molyneux, "Lay by the arbitrary names of pence and shillings, and consider and speak of it as grains and ounces of silver, and 'tis as easy as telling of twenty."

Locke had the penetration to see that the laws existing in his time against the exportation of gold and silver coin must necessarily be futile, and, while it was permitted to export bullion, could answer no conceivable purpose. These laws, which date from the time of Edward the Third, were, curiously enough, not repealed till the year 1819, though, as early as the time of the Restoration, they

had been pronounced by so competent a judge as Sir William Petty to be "nugatory" and "impracticable." Nothing, as Locke says towards the conclusion of his answer to Lowndes, could prevent the exportation of silver and gold in payment of debts contracted beyond the seas, and it could "be no odds to England whether it was carried out in specie or when melted down into bullion." But the principle on which the prohibition of exporting gold and silver coin ultimately rested seems to have been accepted by him as unhesitatingly as it was by almost all the other economists of the time. That principle was that the wealth of a nation is to be measured by the amount of gold and silver in its possession, this amount depending on the ratio of the value of the exports to that of the imports. When the value of the exports exceeded that of the imports, the Balance of Trade, as it was called, was said to be in favour of a country; when, on the other hand, the value of the imports exceeded that of the exports, the Balance of Trade was said to be against it. A favourable balance, it was assumed, must necessarily increase the amount of gold and silver in the country, while an unfavourable balance must necessarily diminish it. And, lastly, the amount of gold and silver in its possession was the measure of a nation's wealth. These views form part of what political economists call the Mercantile Theory, which it was the peculiar glory of Adam Smith to demolish.

It is somewhat humiliating to the biographer of Locke to be obliged to confess that, in this respect, his theories on trade lag considerably behind those of an almost contemporary writer, Sir Dudley North, whose work has already been mentioned. Some of North's maxims are worthy of Adam Smith, and one wonders that,

when once ennunciated, they found so little currency, and were so completely ignored in both the literature and the legislation of the time. Here are a few, but the whole tract may be read in less than an hour. "The whole world, as to trade, is but as one nation or people, and therein nations are as persons." "The loss of a trade with one nation is not that only, separately considered, but so much of the trade of the world rescinded and lost, for all is combined together." No laws can set prices in trade, the rates of which must and will make themselves; but, when such laws do happen to lay any hold, it is so much impediment to trade, and therefore prejudicial." "No man is richer for having his estate all in money, plate, &c., lying by him, but, on the contrary, he is for that reason the That man is richest, whose estate is in a growing condition, either in land at farm, money at interest, or goods in trade." "Money exported in trade. is an increase to the wealth of the nation; but spent in war and payments abroad, is so much impoverishment." 66 'We may labour to edge in the Cuckoo, but in vain ; for no people ever yet grew rich by policies, but it is peace, industry, and freedom that brings trade and wealth, and nothing else."

poorer.

Some of Locke's opinions on trade and finance were undoubtedly erroneous, and it must be confessed that the little tract of Sir Dudley North supplies a better summary of sound economical doctrine than any which we can find in his writings; but then this brochure is merely a summary, with little of argument or elucidation, and, perhaps, it would be diff.cult to point to any previous or contemporary writer, whose works are, on the whole, more important in the history of economical science than those of Locke.

CHAPTER XII.

LOCKE'S INFLUENCE ON THOUGHT.

To trace Locke's influence on subsequent speculation would be to write the History of Philosophy from his time to our own. In England, France, and Germany, there have been few writers on strictly philosophical questions in this century or the last who have not either quoted Locke's Essay with approbation or at least paid him the homage of stating their grounds for dissenting from it. In the last century, his other works, especially those on Government and Toleration, may be said to have almost formed the recognized code of liberal opinion in this country, besides exercising a considerable influence on the rapidly developing speculations which, in the middle of the century, were preparing an intellectual no less than a social revolution in France. I can here only speak of the nature of Locke's influence, and of the directions it took, in the very broadest outline, and it is the less necessary that I should enter into detail, as I have frequently adverted to it in the preceding chapters.

In England, the Essay, though from the first it had its ardent admirers, seemed, for some years after its appearance, to have produced its effect on English philosophical literature mainly by antagonism. Many were the critics who