In a trading nation, I allow, that no restriction of that kind ought to be general; because it then affects the useful and the hurtful branches of importation equally: but in Henry’s days, the sale of corn and wool was sufficient to procure for England all it wanted from abroad; and the interests of trade were not sufficiently combined, to enable the state to act by any other than the most general rules. Forbidding the exportation of coin was found to promote the exportation of English productions, and this was a sufficient reason for making the prohibition peremptory. In this view of the matter, did not Henry judge well, when he obliged the merchants who imported foreign goods, to invest the price they received for them in English commodities? Once more I must say it, he was not so much afraid of the consequences of the money going out, as of the corn and wool remaining at home; had he been sure of the exportation of these articles to as good purpose another way, the prohibition would have been absurd; but I am persuaded that was not the case. The example taken from France is this. After the fatal bankruptcy in 1720, by the blowing up of the Missisippi, the trade of France languished from the effects of the instability of their coin, until the year 1726, when it was set upon that footing on which it has remained ever since. Upon that last general coinage, the same principles of enriching the King by the operation, directed the conduct of the minister. The old specie was cried down, and proscribed in circulation: but it was thought, that as it was the King’s coin, he had a liberty to set a price upon it, at a different rate from any other bullion of the same fineness; and that he had also a right to command the proprietors of it to bring it to the mint at his own price. The consequence was, that those who could were very desirous to send it to Holland, in order to draw back the value they had sent in bills upon Paris. Under such circumstances, were not prohibitions upon the exportation of this coin most consistent with the plan laid down? We shall, in the next chapter, examine the consequences of this operation upon the exchange of France. What has been said, will, I hope, suffice to explain some of the principal motives which statesmen may have, when they lay restrictions on the exportation of the metals, with a view to favour the trade of their nation. But besides the interests of trade, there are other reasons for laying prohibitions on the exportation of the national coin, although that of bullion be left free under certain restrictions. As often as it happens, from whatever cause it may proceed, that the value of a nation’s coin falls to par with bullion of the same fineness, that coin, if exported, may be melted down. This is a loss; because it puts the nation to the expence of coining more for the use of circulation.