Gold, Silver and the Coinage of the Silver Dollar. 293 



1389, 1428 and 1496, to show that the successive "raising of the 

 moneys, " from the time— about 1300 A. D., when the "pound 

 sterling * meant the Tower pound weight of standard silver; down to 

 his own day, when the Troy pound — a weight t luce-quarters of an 

 ounce heavier than the Tower pound — was by statute of Queen Eliza- 

 beth in 1591, coined into 62s — making the coinage of silver under 

 that statute just about one-third the "weight of the coins which passed 

 under the same designation prior to 1300. 



He thinks that general prices up to his times have advanced about 

 six times. He thinks about half of that advance has been by debase- 

 ment of the coin to one-third the weight of pure silver it formerly con- 

 tained, and that the value of silver and gold have been depreciated 

 about one-half by the excessive quantities of these metals "come into 

 the kingdom of Spain out of the West and East Indies, within this 

 hundred years or thereabouts,* and thence dispersed into other parts 

 of the world, whereby it has come to pass that the value of gold and 

 silver is become more vile and cheap, and generally all things valued 

 by them are rated higher, at double and almost treble as much gold 

 and silver as they were rated in the twenty-fifth year of Edward III 

 (1352), as one scale pressed down doth necessarily make the other rise 

 higher." Vaughan, p. 103, 104. 



It would not be difficult also to show, did time permit, that during 

 the last two and a half centuries since the close of this recital on 

 prices, the same tendency has been steadily exhibiting itself of a grad- 

 ual but sure, and in the main, steady decline of the value of both gold 

 and silver as measured by the general prices of commodities and ser- 

 vice. Since the last statute Vaughan quotes, that of King James I, 

 1620, there has been no change in the English coinage — a pound or 

 shilling then, expressing precisely the weight of pure metal which they 

 do now. Would not the prices for wages and service prescribed by this 

 statute seem very inadequate compensation for similar service at the 

 present day? Say thirty-two to forty cents per day for skilled mechan- 

 ics, and twenty cents to twenty-four cents per day for the best common 

 laborers. • 



The conclusion, therefore, seems irresistible, that with the progress 

 of time and freer intercourse of commerce among the nations of the 

 earth, a gradual, slow, but in the main, steady depreciation of the value 



* That is. the 100 years ending about 1625 or 1680, which means the'loOy^rs 



