CURRENCY. 179 



currency not only affects the whole mass of the community, 

 and especially the poorer members of it, but is a great public 

 disaster, because it is fatal to public credit. Its immediate 

 consequence is a total disappearance of good money, (the cur- 

 rency which has been undervalued by the fraudulent issue,) 

 either by exportation, or by a method more common in the 

 Middle Ages, namely, hoarding. In France there were it ap- 

 pears no less than one hundred and fifty changes in the currency 

 during the course of the fourteenth century, and occasionally 

 the coinage was tampered with month by month. 



Every precaution was taken to prevent any exportation of 

 the precious metals; fruitlessly indeed, as the continual com- 

 plaints entered in the royal proclamations shew. In order 

 to secure due obedience to the regulations devised to protect 

 the currency from diminution, an important officer was nomi- 

 nated, under the style of the King's Exchanger, whose duty it 

 was to superintend all transactions, and to prevent all expor- 

 tations. The first person who held this office was De la Pole, 

 the ancestor of those Dukes of Suffolk who occupied so im- 

 portant a position in the reign of Henry the Sixth. The last 

 who held a valid patent was Burleigh, but he never seems to 

 have discharged his functions. Charles the First appointed 

 the Earl of Holland to this office, but the goldsmiths a , and 

 indeed the whole corporation of London, petitioned against 

 the appointment, and Selden proved that the patent was 

 illegal. 



There is a question naturally connected with the medieval 

 currency, What is the exact fall in the value of silver since 

 the fourteenth century ? In other words, how much more silver 

 is needed in order to purchase equal quantities of any com- 

 modity, the demand for which is so uniform as to neutralize 

 any advantage which might be derived by the purchaser in 

 consequence of a diminished cost of production ? 



It was from the fact that population keeps pace with the 

 means of subsistence, and that therefore the general proportion 



* Macpherson, vol. ii. year 1628. 

 N 3 



