a rude and feeble machine. The pieces which it produced,
however, were among the best in Europe. It was not easy to counterfeit
them; and, as their shape was exactly circular, and their edges were
inscribed with a legend, clipping was not to be apprehended. [630] The
hammered coins and the milled coins were current together. They were
received without distinction in public, and consequently in private,
payments. The financiers of that age seem to have expected that the new
money, which was excellent, would soon displace the old money which was
much impaired. Yet any man of plain understanding might have known that,
when the State treats perfect coin and light coin as of equal value, the
perfect coin will not drive the light coin out of circulation, but will
itself be driven out. A clipped crown, on English ground, went as far in
the payment of a tax or a debt as a milled crown. But the milled crown,
as soon as it had been flung into the crucible or carried across the
Channel, became much more valuable than the clipped crown. It might
therefore have been predicted, as confidently as any thing can be
predicted which depends on the human will, that the inferior pieces
would remain in the only market in which they could fetch the same price
as the superior pieces, and that the superior pieces would take some
form or fly to some place in which some advantage could be derived from
their superiority. [631]

The politicians of that age, however, generally overlooked these very
obvious considerations. They marvelled exceedingly that every body
should be so perverse as to use light money in preference to good money.
In other words, they marvelled that nobody chose to pay twelve ounces of
silver when ten would serve the turn. The horse in the Tower still paced
his rounds. Fresh waggon loads of choice money still came forth from
the mill; and still they vanished as fast as they appeared. Great masses
were melted down; great masses exported; great masses hoarded; but
scarcely one new piece was to be found in the till of a shop, or in the
leathern bag which the farmer carried home from the cattle fair. In the
receipts and payments of the Exchequer the milled money did not exceed
ten shillings in a hundred pounds. A writer of that age mentions the
case of a merchant who, in a sum of thirty-five pounds, received only a
single halfcrown in milled silver. Meanwhile the shears of the clippers
were constantly at work. The comers too multipl