to take them. There
were brawls approaching to riots in half the streets of London. The
Jacobites, always full of joy and hope in a day of adversity and public
danger, ran about with eager looks and noisy tongues. The health of King
James was publicly drunk in taverns and on ale benches. Many members of
Parliament, who had hitherto supported the government, began to
waver; and, that nothing might be wanting to the difficulties of the
conjuncture, a dispute on a point of privilege arose between the Houses.
The Recoinage Bill, framed in conformity with Montague's resolutions,
had gone up to the Peers and had come back with amendments, some of
which, in the opinion of the Commons, their Lordships had no right to
make. The emergency was too serious to admit of delay. Montague brought
in a new bill; which was in fact his former bill modified in some
points to meet the wishes of the Lords; the Lords, though not perfectly
contented with the new bill, passed it without any alteration; and
the royal assent was immediately given. The fourth of May, a date long
remembered over the whole kingdom and especially in the capital, was
fixed as the day on which the government would cease to receive the
clipped money in payment of taxes. [648]

The principles of the Recoinage Act are excellent. But some of the
details, both of that Act and of a supplementary Act which was passed at
a later period of the session, seem to prove that Montague had not
fully considered what legislation can, and what it cannot, effect. For
example, he persuaded the Parliament to enact that it should be penal
to give or take more than twenty-two shillings for a guinea. It may be
confidently affirmed that this enactment was not suggested or approved
by Locke. He well knew that the high price of gold was not the evil
which afflicted the State, but merely a symptom of that evil, and that a
fall in the price of gold would inevitably follow, and could by no human
power or ingenuity be made to precede, the recoinage of the silver. In
fact, the penalty seems to have produced no effect whatever, good or
bad. Till the milled silver was in circulation, the guinea continued, in
spite of the law, to pass for thirty shillings. When the milled silver
became plentiful, the guinea fell, not to twenty-two shillings, which
was the highest price allowed by the law, but to twenty-one shillings
and sixpence. [649]

Early in February the panic which had been caused by the first deba