The Government still believed in penalties, and hoped that drastic punishment would stop the clipping of the hammered coin and the melting and export of the new milled coin. A clipper who informed against two other clippers was pardoned. Any one informing against a clipper had a reward of forty pounds. Whoever was found in the possession of silver clippings, filings, or parings should be burned in the cheek with a red-hot iron. Officers were empowered to search for bullion, and the onus of proof as to its origin was thrown on the possessors, or failing this they were fined heavily. But all in vain were these drastic measures; clipping still continued in defiance of all penal laws. Colley Cibber in his _Love’s Last Shift, or the Fool in Fashion_, has a hit at the debased state of the coinage. A gay cynic says, “Virtue is as much debased as our money: and, in faith, _Dei Gratia_ is as hard to be found in a girl of sixteen as round the brim of an old shilling.” This is not the place to enumerate the many foolish schemes that were propounded, some too costly, some unjust, some hazardous. Locke and Newton brought their minds to bear on the subtleties of the question, and adopted the ideas of Dudley North, who died in 1693. His tract on the restoration of the currency is practically the same as that subsequently adopted. William Lowndes, Secretary of the Treasury, Member of Parliament for the borough of Seaford, “a most respectable and industrious public servant,” as Lord Macaulay terms him, was incapable of rising above the details of his office in order to cope with economic principles. “He was not in the least aware that a piece of metal with the King’s head on it was a commodity of which the price was governed by the same laws which govern the price of metal fashioned into a spoon or a buckle, and that it was no more in the power of Parliament to make the kingdom richer by calling a crown a pound than to make the kingdom larger by calling a furlong a mile. He seriously believed, incredible as it may seem, that if the ounce of silver were divided into seven shillings instead of five, foreign nations would sell us their wines and their silks for a smaller number of ounces.” Happily Lowndes was completely refuted by Locke in his _Further Considerations Concerning the Raising the Value of Money_, 1695. Locke recommended what Dudley North had advised, namely, that the King should issue a proclamation declaring hammered money should pass only by weight. What searching, branding, fining, burning, and hanging had failed to do would have been accomplished at once. The clipping of the hammered coin and the melting of the new milled coin to be made into silver plate would have ceased. But it had one objection. The loss would fall on the individual. Those in whose hands the clipped coin happened to be at a particular moment would bear the loss. But the loss in equity should be borne by the State which had allowed such evils to go unchecked.