"In 1726 the legal ratio was fixed in France at 14 marks 5 oz. of silver, to a mark of gold, and that which proves with how much sagacity this point was seized is the fact that during a long course of years France retained in her circulating medium a sufficiently large proportion of each metal. Nevertheless, her gold gradually became less common, and for some years this scarcity has rapidly increased, and this precisely because its legal value has always remained the same, while its metallic value has increased from year to year." He estimated the amount of livres in _louis d'or_ existing in the country at the time of the recoinage, 1785, as 650 million livres, which amounted to only a half of the total coinage (1300 million livres) of the period 1726-85. What seems to have determined Calonne to adopt 15-1/2 was the fact that Spain had the legal ratio of 16, and that there was a probability that, in future, gold would rise in value. As for the market price, he admits that it was only 15.08-15.12 in 1785. The recoinage, therefore, brought a profit of 7,255,216 livres to the King's purse, and a profit of 21,600,000 livres to the holders of the old _louis d'or_. [Sidenote: FRANCE: CALONNE'S POLICY IN 1785] His policy was severely criticised in a report made in 1790 to the National Assembly, which proposed a silver standard, with an authorised circulation of gold coins at the ratio of 14-7/9 and the abolition of seigniorage. It is well known that this was nearer to the market rate. Calonne's ratio, therefore, must be regarded as arbitrary and designing. Practically, the latter recommendation of the committee's paper of 1790 had been conceded in the decree of 30th October 1785, as the seigniorage was by it allowed to be no more than the net cost of reminting. By this celebrated edict of Calonne's, which also enacted a recoinage, the right of seigniorage was practically finally relinquished for France. Fixity was given to silver as the principal money, and a definite ratio was established at which gold was to circulate by its side. In these, its chief points or characteristics, it formed the exact model for the later Act of Republican France, which is ignorantly looked upon as having created the bimetallic system. The Act of 7 Germinal an XI. did but re-enact and perpetuate the edict of 1785. It is important to reaffirm and emphasise this point, as quite wild and blind estimates have been formed of the later action of Republican France. In merest fact, that later action created no new order, it instituted no new idea, it did not even promulgate its own theory. [Sidenote: FRANCE: CURRENCY LEGISLATION AT REVOLUTION]