CHAP. XXIV. USE OF GOLD AND SILVER. 201 



difficulty of exportation to foreign countries had 

 ruined the greater part of them V 



In this estimate of the consumption of gold 

 and silver in France before the revolution is not 

 included that which was used for watches. In 

 1787, the number of watches sold in Paris is 

 stated, in a memoir presented to the Bureau de 

 Commerce, at twenty thousand annually, of which 

 one in twenty was of gold 2 . If we suppose an 

 equal quantity to be sold in the rest of that king- 

 dom, the cases of that number of watches would 

 require as much gold and silver as would make 

 the value of those metals consumed within France 

 amount to somewhat more than a million sterling. 

 A great part of the watches sold in France were, 

 even at the time to which we refer, imported from 

 other countries chiefly from Geneva, but some 

 from Neufchatel. 



At the beginning of the eighteenth century the 

 goldsmiths of Paris were under the inspection of 

 public officers, who, by a royal ordinance of 1703, 

 were to attend the process of their manufacture, 

 to ascertain the purity of the metal, and to forbid 

 the making basins and other articles heavier than 

 the prescribed weight. They were bound to have 

 their furnaces and forges in their open shops, in 

 view of the public from the street, and to affix a 

 notice of the fineness of the articles then in the 



1 Herbin, vol. ii. p. 180. 2 Ibid, vol. ii. p. 172. 



