Given, however, the above standpoint, and mental reservation of deduction and innuendo, it is permissible to treat of this debasement as showing _how_ or _in what way_ a debasement _does actually_ facilitate the malignant action of bimetallic law.[14] Further, the present instance of debasement is the only one on record in English currency history, and the testimonies regarding it are of extreme interest. [Sidenote: THE TUDOR DEBASEMENT] For the purpose of external or foreign trade, a debasement of currency is fatuous and pernicious. The coins are estimated at their content of pure metal, and the international exchange is so rated. The consequence is an apparent rise of foreign prices proportioned to the extent of the debasement. This at once unsettles internal or home trade prices, and they rise to the same level, but with such inequality of motion as may happen to follow from friction, local ignorance, want of communication, or from the intricacies of trade. The inequality of exchange-coinage rates which results from this is the bullionist's or the financier's opportunity, and swiftly and invisibly the good species--or any, bad or good, upon which any differential profit can be had--disappear from circulation. The consequence is that the rising prices which instituted the process are no longer accompanied by an expanding or increasing volume of currency, but, on the contrary, with an enormous decrease in the total of acceptable or efficient currency. Hence come decay of trade, and ruin of town and country. This is no paper, _a priori_ argument. It is the patent unmistakable statement of history and fact. The staple trade of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was woollen. Coventry was one of the considerable seats of the industry, and known as a flourishing and wealthy town. In the third year of Edward VI.--the time when this debasement of our coinage reached the lowest point--its trade was gone, and its population had sunk to 3000, "whereas within memory there had been 15,000." In the extraordinary "_Dialogue concerning the common weal of this realm of England_," the scene of which was probably laid in this very decayed town of Coventry, the advance of prices, and the general tendency of the above argument, is more than amply borne out. "I have well experience thereof," says the "cappe" or hat manufacturer, "for I am fain to give my journeymen 2d. a day more than I was wont to do, and yet they say they cannot sufficiently live thereon. The city which was heretofore well inhabited and wealthy (as ye know every one of you) is fallen for lack of occupiers to great desolation and poverty."