subjects. It was, in part, responsible for the later differences between Charles I. and his Parliament. It also prompted close attention to the development of trade as a source of possible revenue.

24. Another recoinage was undertaken by William III.

In the reign of William III., at the close of the 1696 seventeenth century, a fresh recoinage was accomplished. The silver currency was again in a bad condition, caused by clipping and wearing, and export of the heavier coins. It had not been changed in weight since the Elizabethan age, and the silver pound was still coined into sixty-two shillings. In the interval the gold had been raised four times in value. The guinea introduced by Charles II. was now the gold coin which was current. But prices were reckoned in silver, and the silver pound was the monetary unit, though the current silver coins were of smaller value. The gold was legal tender at twenty shillings, but it was accepted in offices of the Government at twenty-one, and then at twenty-one and sixpence. In no long period it rose from twenty-two to thirty shillings. As in the time before the recoinage of Elizabeth, money lost the certainty of value needed to enable it to serve as a good medium of exchange, and, much more, to perform the office of a just and steady standard. As in Elizabethan times also, the light coin was called in, and new coin issued to correct these evils. So firmly was the Elizabethan standard now established, that it was determined to preserve the silver at its old intrinsic value. The gold guinea was rated to it first at twenty-eight

* Cf. the present writer's "Money and its Relations to Prices,” pp. 131-133.

shillings, and was then reduced by successive stages to twenty-two. In 1699 it was reduced to twenty

one shillings and sixpence, and in 1717, by the 1699 advice of Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the 1717 Mint, to twenty-one shillings. But even then it was rated too high in comparison with the Continental rating, and the natural consequence followed that the silver was exported abroad and the gold took its place in the English currency. The same thing had occurred before this recoinage; and difficulties due to similar causes had, as we saw, been a common feature of early monetary history. In the eighteenth century their influence was combined with that of increased supplies of gold from the mines. The more costly, but overrated, metal thus became predominant in the currency, and at the time of the next recoinage, in 1774,

1774

its condition attracted, and received, particular attention.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM AND THE

OLD ECONOMICS.

(From the Tudors to the Georges.)

FOREIGN AND COLONIAL COMMERCE.

1. The Elizabethan age marked the beginning of the maritime, industrial, and commercial power of England.

*

In the remarkable lectures on "The Expansion of England," which expressed, if they did not inspire, the leading ideas of the important movement for "Imperial Federation," Sir John Seeley reached the "conclusion that the England we know, the supreme maritime, commercial, and industrial Power, is quite of modern growth, that it did not clearly exhibit its principal features till the eighteenth century, and that the seventeenth century is the period when it was gradually assuming this form. If we ask," he continues, "when it began to do so, the answer is particularly easy and distinct. It was in the Elizabethan age." It was in that age that "England began to discover her vocation to trade, and to the dominion of the sea." A new era then opened. "Before the Tudor period we find only the embryo of a navy."

* Chapter V.

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"Manufactures," indeed, had not been "wanting," even to the "England of the Plantagenets"; but "she began to be a great manufacturing country" in the Elizabethan age. It was when the manufacturers of Flanders perished" in the "catastrophe of the religious war of the Low Countries with Spain," that "Flemish manufacturers swarmed over into England," "and gave new life to the industry, which long had its centre at Norwich." Nor, again, was a "carrying trade" possible save for a "great maritime country" at a time when a "great sea traffic existed." The " great sea traffic "

followed the discovery of the New World; and England became a "great maritime country" after the Elizabethan age. The discovery of the New World shifted the highway of traffic from the inland lake of the Mediterranean to the open Ocean, and England was favourably placed, by geographical situation, for trade between America and the Continent of Europe. It is curious, and not unimportant, to note that in the Far East at the present day Japan occupies a similar position between America and Asia. "From the point of view," lastly, "of business" England, in the Middle Ages, was "not an advanced, but on the whole a backward country." "She must have been despised in the chief commercial countries; as now she herself looks upon the business system and the banking of countries like Germany and even France as old-fashioned compared to her own, so in the Middle Ages the Italians must have looked upon England."

2. The seventeenth century saw the commencement of Colonial expansion.

66

It was, then, in the Elizabethan age that England first assumed its modern character." "At this point"

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also "we mark the beginning of the expansion, the first symptom of the rise of Greater Britain." The historian, from whom we have quoted, put forward the view* that "competition for the New World between the five western maritime States of Europe "-Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, and England-" sums up a great part of the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." The preceding "sixteenth century," he writes, "may be called the Spain and Portugal period." "In the seventeenth the other three states, France, Holland, and England enter the colonial field." At first the "Dutch take the lead"; but during the course of the century "Portugal declines," "Spain remains in a condition of immobility," and, later, Holland loses its importance. "The eighteenth century," in its turn, witnesses the great duel of France and England for the New World." Thus treated, the economic history of England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries receives fresh illumination. A connecting thread may then be followed through Commonwealth, and Restoration, and Revolution, stretching from the Elizabethan age to the Battle of Waterloo. The growth of Greater Britain gives an order and an unity to what might otherwise appear confused and disconnected. In the "Elizabethan war with Spain" the "fermentation" may be discovered "out of which" Greater Britain "sprang." "Under the first two Stuarts," it came "into existence by the settlement of Virginia, New England and Maryland. At a later time, in the eighteenth century, it is seen to engage, now more mature, in a long duel with Greater France"; and the interval was filled by the "foundation of the English * Chapter VI.