Lowndes had maintained that "raising the coin," in addition to making up the loss caused by calling in the clipped money, and other advantages, would increase the circulating medium of the country, and so put a stop to the multiplication of hazardous paper-credit and the inconveniences of bartering. Nothing could be better than Locke's reply: "Just as the boy cut his leather into five quarters (as he called them) to cover his ball, when cut into four quarters it fell short, but, after all his pains, as much of his ball lay bare as before; if the quantity of coined silver employed in England fall short, the arbitrary denomination of a greater number of pence given to it, or, which is all one, to the several coined pieces of it, will not make it commensurate to the size of our trade or the greatness of our occasions. This is as certain as that, if the quantity of a board which is to stop a leak of a ship fifteen inches square, be but twelve inches square, it will not be made to do it by being measured by a foot that is divided into fifteen inches, instead of twelve, and so having a larger tale or number of inches in denomination given to it." The general principle that to depreciate the coinage is to rob the creditor, and that, though you may change the name, you cannot change the thing, was quite as emphatically stated by Petty and North as by Locke. But the value of Locke's tracts consisted in their amplitude of argument and illustration, which left to the unprejudiced reader no alternative but to accept their conclusion. As he himself said in a letter to Molyneux, "Lay by the arbitrary names of pence and shillings, and consider and speak of it as grains and ounces of silver, and 'tis as easy as telling of twenty." * * * * *