efficient were the attempts at control, by the
decisions of the Imperial Diet and the Sovereigns. At the inspection of
every piece of coin the master of the mint had with him a warden, who
proved the texture and weight of the coin. The ten Circles of the
Empire held yearly approbation days, in order, mutually, to compare
their coin and to reject the bad; every Circle was to be represented by
a warden-general; for every Circle an appointed number of mints were
established, in which the lesser rulers were to have their money
specially coined: but all these regulations were only imperfectly
carried out.

There were undoubtedly some Sovereigns and mint-masters then in the
country who were faithful, but they were few in number; and generally a
mint-master, who was considered capable by a German Circle, and worked
in a legal mint, was concerned in many strange practices. It was
difficult to exercise control over these imperfect coining proceedings;
the temptations were great, and morality in general much lower than
now. From the Sovereign down to the understrapper and Jewish purveyor,
every one concerned in coining deceived the other. The Sovereign
allowed the master of the mint for a series of years to work and become
rich; he perhaps permitted in silence the coin of the country to be
debased, in order at the right moment to proceed against the guilty,
from whom then he squeezed out by pressure, like a sponge, all that
they had sucked up for many years drop by drop. It did not avail them
that they had long quitted the service, for after many years greedy
justice would reach them: but the mint-master, who was not in the
convenient position of the lion, to be able to secure his booty by a
single stroke of the paw, was in the habit of industriously
overreaching his masters, the purveyors, nay even his cashiers, the
associates, and the apprentices, not to mention the public. The other
assistants did no better; every man's hand was against the other, and
the curse, which according to the proverb lies on the gold of the
German dwarf, appears in the seventeenth century to have depraved all
who transmuted the shining metal into money. The common method of
transacting the business was as follows.

The master of the mint purchased the metal, defrayed the costs of the
stamping, and paid a tax to the Sovereign for every Cologne mark which
he struck, which it appears amounted generally to about four good
groschen: but he had to pay dea