And whereas you’ll say that Farmers and Grasiers are no Merchants, and wou’d be as well contented with passable Coin as old Standard, ’tis very true, but they keep up to such Prices as their whole-sale Chapmen can afford to give ’em; and when a Factor sells his Cloth at _Blackwell-Hall_; he considers the Necessity of the Buyer, as well as Expence of the Clothier; when a Merchant can make a better Profit, ’tis expected he should give a better Price. But this with some unthinking People is the Effect of War; and because some things are dearer upon this Account than others, therefore every thing else that is dearer must have the same Cause assigned; but a general Cheapness of things should, methinks, be the Natural Effect of our War, if our Money with which we go to Market were as it should be. The War consumes but little of our Product and Manufacture; it carries a great many Mouthes into _Flanders_, and that would naturally make Provisions cheap: Many of these Mouths had idle Hands, and so they are not miss’d in the Manufacture; but instead of them, a great many industrious Foreigners come among us who eat little and work much. The Taxes, as I said, are great Inducements to Frugality, and the Advantages People have of late made of Money, have been no less. These and other such like things if the Price of Gold and Silver had not risen, must have occasion’d a Fall of most other Commodities. And now let us consider the Danger of the high Price of Gold as it stands at present. Coin is the most portable Commodity, and Gold the most portable Coin; but we have run it up high, and therefore do’nt at present fear Exportation; but then, if ’tis considerably higher than among our Neighbours, there is great Reason to fear too great an Importation may be as dangerous, as a disadvantagious one doth already prove. It seems to me so curious and nice a Commodity that always there may be Danger in it. If in the great Thirst that’s now upon us, we take in too much that will occasion a still more dangerous Rise of Silver: For considering the present Balance of Trade, the more Gold is imported, the less there will be of Silver; and if we import too little, we leave our selves destitute of a Way of Trading. And if the Gold which is our present Support, should by the Craft of Foreigners, or necessities of the War follow the Silver out of the Nation, we should be left, I doubt in a very bad Condition. And if its Value should rise, as it must needs do if the Silver Coin grow worse and worse, then by how much it rises, by so much more all the Inconveniences and Dangers of its late Rise among us will encrease. What those Dangers are at present is no great Mystery, the _English_ Merchants will make none of it if they may be heard. The melancholly Letters which their Factors abroad daily send ’em makes the Case plain.