Standing so early and so almost completely alone as it does, this Act evinces an unexampled prescience and boldness. It doubtless reflects the commercial traditions of Holland, but that it should have been at a single stroke transferred to England at a time when she was so economically different and distant from Holland, needs make us pause in admiration. The only parallel to it, if any, would arise if France should suddenly, and by a single enactment, adopt to the full the Free Trade policy of England. As a matter of fact this Act of 1663 proved itself for a long time, and through many oscillations, impossible of execution, and far into the eighteenth century the British Government meddled, by legislation and proclamation, with the export of the precious metals, and with the tariff of the coins, as will be seen immediately. It was not till 1780 that a similar Act was passed for Ireland. In 1803 the Lords of the Treasury were by statute authorised to grant licences for the exportation of silver bullion without any such certificate or document whatsoever as had been required by the statute of 6 and 7 Wm. III. c. 17, sect. 5. It was almost a century after this action of England that France followed in the same path. By a proclamation of 7th October 1755, permission was given to the free commerce in precious metals and in foreign monies. But in the case of France, as in that of England, the enactment was not immediately nor fully realisable. The exportation of the national specie was still forbidden, and more than once the State found itself obliged to return to the question of the tariffing of its coinage. It is this vacillation--a vacillation, however, which must in every instance be attributed to sheer State necessity--which makes it impossible to trace in detail and point by point the fall of so much of the Mercantile System as concerned the regulating of international movements of metals. The _practice_ of the commercial world was doubtless in advance of the legislator's standpoint, as indicated by such detached references, and was effectual in completing the revolution silently and under the surface, whether by the aid or in spite of laws and proclamations. The same had been the case, e.g., with the old usury laws. When effected there are two highly important results which stand as the outcome of this change in the theory of international commerce.