It is demonstrable, even from Sir Isaac Newton's own figures, that the calling down of the guinea to 21s., though largely, was not completely effective in destroying the profit of arbitrage transactions with Holland. With the guinea at 21s., the ratio was still 15-14295/68200 while in France and Holland the ratio was 15 or under. That the process of culling and exporting the heaviest silver specie still continued is proved by the state of silver coinage twenty years later, when shillings were found to be deficient in weight, by between 6 and 11 per cent., and sixpences between 11 and 22 per cent., and all species so scarce as to threaten greatest confusion in every branch of trade. At the accession of George III., 1760, the silver coinage was found in so imperfect a state that the crown pieces had almost entirely disappeared, though minted since 1795 to the amount of over a million and a half sterling. Of half-crowns, likewise minted to the value of £2,329,370, only defaced and impaired specimens remained current, while shillings and sixpences had lost every sign of impression. Up to 1763 only a matter of £5791 in silver had issued from the Mint--practically no coinage at all. Gradually however, owing to the force of wider principles at work, the matter of the ratio righted itself. Ever since 1756 the value of gold had been rising all over Europe. In 1759 the continental ratio was still calculated at 14-1/2, as compared with 15-1/5 in England; but by 1773 the continental ratio had overtaken the English, and the market price of standard silver had risen to 5s. 2d. per oz.--the English Mint rate. In the greatly depreciated state of the silver coinage--three-fourths of it was said to be base--even the approach of a fair ratio acted prejudicially on gold. Already, in 1771, the export of gold to Holland had become noticed, and it was asserted that the gold coins had never before been so deficient. They were sent over to Holland, and there filed and returned and put into circulation--a bimetallic phenomenon that always recurs in a currency containing two differently depreciated elements. [Sidenote: ENGLAND: STATE OF THE COINAGE IN 1774]