352 PROPORTION OF COIN CHAP. XXVIII. 



hundreds of corporations in the several cities and 

 towns of the kingdom. Besides all these stores 

 of articles of furniture chiefly of silver, there are 

 in the twelve thousand parish churches of England, 

 and in the thousands of protestant dissenting, to 

 say nothing of the few catholic, chapels, a greater 

 or less store of plate for the public service of our 

 modest and simple forms of devotion, which, vary- 

 ing as they do in value from one to one hundred 

 pounds in each, must amount in the whole to a 

 large sum. 



The largest accumulations of gold and silver are, 

 however, those in the shops of the numerous gold 

 and silversmiths in the several cities and towns of 

 this kingdom, and in the workshops of the various 

 manufacturers who supply goods to them, and to 

 the merchants who export their wares to other 

 countries. There is good reason to believe that 

 no one class of traders in this country keep so 

 large a stock of wares by them, in proportion to 

 their actual sales, as those who deal in gold and 

 silver goods ; but especially in the higher kinds of 

 jewellery in which the most gold is employed. 

 The perpetual changes of fashion in articles of 

 mere ornament are cherished by the constant exer- 

 cise of the faculties of tasteful invention, and these 

 render a succession of new objects indispensable to 

 the traders, though thereby the value of the re- 

 mainder of their goods becomes gradually lessened, 

 till they are worth no more than what the gold, 

 which composes a part of them, will fetch as bullion. 



