"From this we may perceive that the 'unhanged, thievish, oath-forgetting, dishonourable,' _Kippers_ and _Wippers_, though not indeed to be quite exculpated, are not so much to be condemned as if they were the _causa principalis_ of the ruin of the German States. I have, alas! assuredly great fears, that if once there is a delivery to the devil or hangman, the _Kippers_ and _Wippers_, changers and usurers, Jews and Jew associates, helpers and helpers' helpers, one thief with another, will all be hurled off to the devil, or be hung up at the same time together, like yonder host with his companions. Yet with a difference. For their principals and patrons will justly have the prerogative and pre-eminence, and indeed some of them have been already sent there beforehand. The others will shortly follow to the above-mentioned place, and it will then avail nothing on this journey downward, whether one treats them with _carmina_ or _crimina_, whether one passes judgment on them as criminals, or gives them laudatory poems--_facilis descensus Averni_--they will easily find the way, for they need no good fortune for that; the devil will couple them all with one cord, be the rogues ever so big. _Fiat_." It is not improbable that a similar view of their social prospects in another world was impressed upon the rulers from many quarters. At all events, even they discovered that they could only be saved by the most speedy help; nothing would avail them but the reduction and hasty withdrawal of the new coinage, and a return to the good old Imperial coin. Thus the first fears of the princes and cities caused them to depreciate their new money, and to make use of these verdicts in order to express their abhorrence--not of very old date--of the bad coin, and they forthwith had the coin stamped honourably of due weight and alloy, as prescribed by the Imperial law. In order to put a stop to the excessive increase of prices, they hastened to put forth a tariff of goods and wages, which decided the highest price to be permitted. It is clear that this latter remedy could not be of more lasting use than the famous edict of Diocletian, thirteen hundred years before. The compulsion which, for example, it exercised over the city weekly markets, day labourers, and guilds, was only a temporary help for restoring the overflowing stream to its old bed.