The _Letter on Toleration_, as already mentioned, had appeared anonymously in Holland in 1689. In 1690 the _Essay on the Human Understanding_ was published, and also the two _Treatises on Government_; the first, a reply to Filmer, the advocate of divine right, composed, in Professor Fowler's opinion, between 1680 and 1685; the second written during the last years of Locke's residence in Holland. The _Letter on Toleration_, the authorship of which was not acknowledged during Locke's lifetime, was followed by three defences against assailants, two of which appeared respectively in 1690 and 1692, the third was posthumous. The _Essay on the Human Understanding_, adopted from the first as a text-book at Trinity College, Dublin, but ineffectually proscribed in the writer's own university, called forth criticisms from Norris of Bemerton, to which Locke replied in two essays allowed to remain unpublished during his life, 'for,' he said, 'I love not controversy.' He could not, however, avoid a controversy with John Edwards and Bishop Stillingfleet, on his _Reasonableness of Christianity_ (1695). After writing five pamphlets, Locke ultimately remained in possession of the field, the drift of opinion being entirely in his favour, though few of the official ministers of religion ventured to come forward openly in his defence. The _Treatise on Education_ (1693), written at the request of William Molyneux, excited comparatively little controversy. Another very important class of the productions of his affluent maturity were those on trade and finance, by which he rendered the utmost service to the state. By his _Considerations on the Value of Money_ (1691), and other tracts, he contributed largely to the reform of the currency, the condition of which had become intolerable, but was in great danger of being corrected by remedies worse than the disease. Several other publications contributed to disseminate enlightened views on trade, manufactures, and the interest of money. He could not always be right; it is both painful and ludicrous to find so wise and good a man obliged _ex officio_ as a Commissioner of Trade to find reasons for discouraging the woollen manufacture in Ireland; which Swift seems to ridicule in describing the Laputan philosophers who had devised means to remove the wool from a sheep's back, and hoped shortly to propagate the breed of naked sheep over the kingdom. This, nevertheless, is but a slight inconsistency with the general tenor of Locke's views on economical subjects, which, no less than his political and religious convictions, tended irresistibly towards unrestricted freedom. In 1700 he was released from public life, and spent his few remaining years undisturbed by controversy, in the society of the amiable family of Sir Francis Masham, of High Laver, Essex, of whose house he had long been an inmate. Lady Masham, singularly enough, was the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, the great English