"Our journalist reverts to the subject of the mint set up in Jersey some twelvemonths before, which at that time promised to become a profitable financial speculation. The manager, Colonel Smyth, he informs us, originally a landed proprietor, and a man of good family in England, had been, before the troubles, master of one of his Majesty's provincial mints, and by virtue of his office an honorary privy councillor. On the breaking out of the civil war he commanded a regiment in the king's service, but, at its termination, fled with hundreds of others into France, from whence he came to Jersey, with his wife and a large train of domestics, during the Prince of Wales's sojourn in that island. Being desirous of exercising his former profession, and, moreover, provided with dies and other coining implements, he succeeded in establishing a mint under his royal highness's sanction and the countenance of the governor, but not, as we shall see, under the patronage of the chancellor of the exchequer. "In a few months the concern turned out to be an utter failure--partly owing to mismanagement, partly to an alleged scarcity of bullion. Smyth, a person of expensive habits, who kept up an extravagant private establishment, becoming deeply involved, was forced to dispose not only of his household goods, but of the greater part of his machinery, reserving merely the dies he had brought over with him. Towards the end of May he again sought refuge in France, intending, as he said, to send his wife into England to compound for his sequestered estates. "Chevalier, although he admits that Colonel Smyth, 'etant a Jersey, fit de la monnoie de quoi je ne dis rien,' is a firm believer in the actual existence of a mint from whence were issued coins of gold and silver of legal tender. Misled by his assertions--on all other subjects rigidly accurate--we confidently bestowed considerable time and industry in seeking to obtain specimens of the St. Georges, jacobuses, half-crowns, and shillings, so minutely described, and alleged to have been struck in Jersey. The perusal, however, of the subjoined letter dissipated the illusion--proved that the mint was a Mississippi Scheme, a South Sea Bubble on a small scale, and that the master thereof was little better than a swindling adventurer--thus accounting for the non-existence of the coinage in any numismatic collection:-- "SIR EDWARD HYDE TO SIR EDWARD NICHOLAS.