Some Considerations about Adjusting the Price of Gold by CURRENCY COMMISSION - 1695: OCCASIONED BY THE RISING OF GUINYS

[pp]3 [1] blank. A submission to the goverment's Coinage Commission suggesting a limit on the price of gold in response to the currency crisis of the 1690. The solution adopted by this merchant who drew on his experiences as far afield as Newcastle and Nottingham was the same as that subsequently adopted by John Locke and the incoming Master of the Mint, Isaac Newton. The anonymous writer has used three sides of a foolscap size bifolium, the first two dated to August 1695, the third to November.Old sewing holes visible along vertical fold; docket title to final leaf; William III watermark to paper. Addressing himself to the Commission in August 1695 and citing personal experience from business trips to Newcastle, Nottingham, Newark and Northampton, the anonymous author acknowledges that Parliament's decisions 'for declaring and settling the Rate of Silver, and letting gold alone, are proper for their particular consideration yet with Submission permit a Story' before explaining through a reasoned example the problem caused by foreign arbitrage operating on British coin, continuing 'As there is an accession of defect in Coin, there is So consequently of loss, and will be proportionately of charge in repairing.' The writer's solution is to 'adjust the price of gold' and in his postscript from November 1695 written on the third page the writer reports the complaints he has heard that arise from a failure to address this crisis of coinage and the difficulties with 'clearing the Coal and Lead. having been at Newcastle and there discoursed Some Merch[an]ts about the business of Coin.' - making particular reference to variable rates of exchange between northern English and Scottish merchants. Obviously expert in his subject, the writer references his own earlier 'Discourses' on coinage but doesn't identify himself. The currency crisis was caused by a mismatch between bullion and symbolic value which meant that high-value gold coins were plentiful but silver coins were being melted down for their bullion value thus preventing the government from paying its armies and causing day to day hardship because of the absence of currency for small transactions.