1. _That the Clipt Money be all called in without giving full
satisfaction to the Proprietors_; and this I take to be a piece of
Injustice, because this Money was at first given out to us by the
Government, as a sufficient pledge and unalterable Security of our
Properties, and it was at first issued out of the Mint in such various
and undesigned Shapes, in respect of the Peripherie or Circumference in
which it hath been debased, and so various withall in the thickness and
weight of each respective piece, that ’twas almost impossible for the
Subject to distinguish the diminutions, which at first were so Curious,
so Subtil, and small as was not to be easily suspected; and it hath been
by gradual and sensible approaches that the present abasements are so
considerable.
But this cannot be so well urged in behalf of Counterfeit Money, it is
not any thing we have received of the State, it never was given to us,
as a Pledge and Security; and so never was Money properly so called, but
a False, and Counterfeit sort of Ware which every man Bartered for at
his own Peril, and to such _Caveat Emptor_ might properly have been
said.
But if the wisdom of _Parliament_ things fit to make Compensation for
all the Counterfeit Money, I have nothing to say against it: They are
the proper Judges.
Or if they shall not think fit to give a full Compensation for the Clipt
Money, I have nothing to say, it would be great presumption in a private
man to dictate.
In the method I shall tender, I shall make provision for a full
Compensation for all the clipt and diminished money of the Royal
Standard; at the small expence of 250.000 _l._ which is vastly less than
I have heard yet proposed, I reckon three quarters of the money may be
paid back in good Milled Coyn forthwith, as fast as it can be coyned.
The second Project I designed by the former Axiom to obviate is,
_The compelling of people to supply a present exigence by bringing in
their Plate into the Mint_:
Which would be an attempt I doubt of pernicious Consequence, and instead
of that I have made a provision; whereby questionless as much Plate will
be crouded into the Mint with all the speed imaginable, as shall make up
in tale the two millions of Pounds Sterling of clipt money which when
melted down produced but one; and then I presume the extraordinariness
of the encouragement may, and ought to Cease.