guising thereof;" and then it is declared to be apparent that these practices are "very much occasioned by those who drive a trade of exchanging broad money for clipped money, and by other acts and devices." To remedy this state of things it is now enacted, that, if any person should at any one time either exchange, lend, sell, borrow, buy, receive, or pay any broad silver money, or silver money unclipped, of the coin of the kingdom, for more than the same was coined for, and ought by law to go for, he should forfeit ten times the amount of the money so illegally exchanged. A variety of new restrictions were at the same time imposed upon the trade in bullion; such as, that no person should cast ingots or bars of silver, under a penalty of five hundred pounds; that none should buy, sell, or have in custody any clippings or filings of coin under the like penalty; that no person should export any melted silver without having it first stamped at Goldsmiths' Hall, and taking oath that no part of it had been before it was melted current coin of the kingdom, or clippings therefrom; that none but goldsmiths and refiners should deal in the buying or selling of silver bullion, under pain of suffering six months' imprisonment, &c.[1] But it might as well have been attempted to stop the flowing of the tide by act of parliament. Before this measure was devised, guineas were passing for thirty shillings, and exchequer tallies were often at from thirty to forty per cent, discount. The new act did as little good as the other passed two years before; "and," says Anderson, "as the diminishing of the old hammered money daily increased, so far that it is said shillings scarcely continued more than threepence in silver, the condition of the nation became very alarming; which gave the greatest joy to the disaffected at home, who hoped thereby for a total overthrow of King William's government. The French king also had great expectations from this calamity, so far as to have been .heard to say, that King William would never be able to surmount the difficulty."[2] The wretched state to which
