The act of the States and the Order in Council were, to say the least of them, highly injudicious. The only coin apparently in circulation was the _liard_, and the accounts were kept in _livres_ and _sous_. The proportion between the sol and the livre remained unchanged; but it followed, from the new law, that if a person did not meet his liabilities within the specified time of six months, his debts were consequently increased fifty per cent. if he had to pay them in liards; and he could pay them apparently in no other coin. The value of the _sol_ relative to the _liard_ was raised fifty per cent.; that is, six liards were to be estimated as equivalent to one sol, instead of four liards as heretofore. Now, on what grounds could the States establish this great difference, when it did not exist in reality? We ascertain positively by an act of the States of the 21st of December, 1725, that the real exchangeable difference between the liards, at their estimated value of four to a sol, and gold and silver coin, was only twelve per cent. in favour of the latter. The rate of exchange between countries is not dependent on or regulated by any legislative authority, however despotic or absolute it may be, but is regulated by the real intrinsic relative value of the coins in circulation in the two countries; and hence the rate of exchange, compared with the par of exchange, will show the depreciation sustained by the circulating medium of a country; for the difference between the par and the rate of exchange should in ordinary circumstances not exceed the cost of transmission of the precious metals from one country to the other. Now, by an act of the States of the 21st of December, 1725, we learn that they were indebted to a merchant at St. Malo for the proceeds of the sale of a cargo of wheat, which had been taken possession of and sold to the people by the States, at a time of great scarcity in the Island. They had remitted a portion of the amount; but there remained a balance due of 3,332 livres tournois, which Mr. Patriarche had engaged to remit to St. Malo. The States ordered that this amount should be paid to Mr. Patriarche by the deputy viscount in liards, thus incidentally proving that there was in reality no other coin in circulation; but as Mr. Patriarche had to pay the amount to the merchant at St. Malo in gold and silver, and as these bore a premium compared to liards, the loss, or rather the amount of the premium, had of course to be made good by the States; and they accordingly ordered that that difference, amounting to 416 livres ten sous, should be raised by rate on the parishes, and placed in the hands of the deputy viscount, for payment to Mr. Patriarche. We are thus enabled satisfactorily to ascertain the real comparative difference between the value of the liard and other metallic currency, or, in other words, the premium which the latter bore compared with the copper currency, at the rate of four liards to the sol.