14. The silver value of the gold coinage shall be entirely fixed by the relation of the supply to the demand, and no one is bound to take gold in the place of the legal silver value of the country. 16. Our Finance Minister is empowered to settle the price at which the crown and the half-crown shall be taken into our pay offices. The established rate, as well as the permission to receive crowns and half-crowns instead of silver coins in our offices, may at any time be revoked or restricted by the publication of a proclamation by our Finance Minister. 19. Our Minister of State is also authorised to fix the value above which foreign gold and silver coins must not be offered or given in payment in ordinary transactions. The subsequent course of events and the existing Prussian (Imperial German) system have been already specified (see text, p. 215). Hamburg. The origin of the common Mint standard of Lübeck and Hamburg was the division of the mark into 16 schillingen, and each schilling into 12 pfennige. The metal mark and the Mint mark soon parted company, and by the time of the treaty of 1255 the two states agreed to mint the mark of fine silver into 38 schillingen 10 pfennige (= 2 marks 6 schillingen 10 pfennige). The Wendish standard was established by the adoption in 1325 of the Hamburg-Lübeck treaty by Wismar and Lüneburg. In 1433 this Wendish standard adopted the Cologne mark as its weight basis. COURSE OF DEPRECIATION OF THE STANDARD. Mks. Sch. Pf. 1226--The mark of fine silver coined into 2 2 0 1255 " " " 2 9 5 1293 " " " 2 9 8 1305 " " " 2 15 5 1325 " " " 3 0 9 1353 " " " 3 10 11 1375 " " " 4 3 0 1398 " " " 4 15 2 1403 " " " 5 1 11 1411 " " " 5 12 5 1430 " " " 8 8 0 1450 " " " 9 12 2 1461 " " " 11 8 10 1506 " " " 12 8 0 The Mint Union of the Wendish states continued until the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it expired unperceived. The experience of Hamburg in the _Kipper und Wipper Zeit_, with its resultant establishment of the Hamburg Bank, has been already referred to.