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value in return? Will not this circumstance to a considerable degree, counteract even favourable exchanges? In short, can those two Countries be really upon a level as to money and bullion transactions, whereof the one is taxed at 4l. per head, and the other only 1l. per head?
There is another consideration, which effects the Mints of the two Countries. It is an understood fact, that a very large proportion of the Sovereigns which were issued from the Mint here in 1815, passed into France, and were coined into Louis' at the Paris Mint; a fact so notorious, as to have called for a Legislative Act to meet the evil. As the French take a seignorage in their Coin, of above 7 per cent, they will not be at a loss for similar operations, if we should be absurd enough to bind down hereafter the current rate of our Coin or the price of bullion to the Mint price.
I now then beg leave to return to my quotation from the Bullion Report of 1810. I beg leave to substitute Increase of Taxes to Excess of Currency, as the cause of the rise of prices—and then I argue with the Report, that in the event of prices being greatly augmented in one Country by a great increase of taxes, whilst no similar increase has led to a similar rise of prices in a neighbouring Country, the price of gold will no longer continue to bear the same relative value in the two Countries as before.
If the Committees of Parliament have directed their inquiries to the points I have above suggested, and no longer impute, without proof, the state of the price of gold or the cause of exchange to excess of currency, we shall hope that the real truth will at length be admitted and fairly acted upon.
The measure hitherto suggested for curing the alledged evil, viz. the high price of gold, is to diminishour
