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Land Forces without Money in 1667.
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carry out as much as they can of the money already in England, and what shall at any time after be brought into it. If by the unlawful tricks and now introduced trade of goldsmiths, in melting down our heavy moneys, and all other moneys they can come at, by making our moneys a commodity to be transported or turned into plate to furnish every alehouse, or the inferior ranks of people, shall be countenanced and continued; and if no other metall should be coyned to make an exchange or commensuration in the daily and common occasions of the multitude for their food and sustenance to keep the people from being tartars and tories, necessitated to take all the courses they can of violence, rapine, and outrages one to another, or to make the poorer sort of people for want of work or trade, which cannot be had, or driven without money to raise tumults or mutinies. And it being on the contrary very possible and probable to prevent all or most of those growing and dangerous evills, if we would return to our own good laws and customs, which we have too much quarrelled with. If the people would not foolishly waste and consume our own monies, and send it into foreign parts to purchase pride and superfluities, and carry away the dollars and pieces of eight which our merchants bringing into England, are sold by them to the goldsmiths and bankers, who usurp the offices and places of the king's exchangers for 4s. 3d. a piece, and sent away as fast as they come to France for 4s. 10d. and to Ireland and Scotland for 5s. a piece, which makes our mint stand idle, and Ireland and Scotland full of dollers and pieces of eight, when England hath none or very few of them, or but very little of other money, and is ready to starve or perish for want of it. If we kept our own coined money at home, and carried not away the foreign coin and moneys which came in unto us; if we made as our neighbour nations have done some inferior base mettled moneys to help to save our moneys, and did our people not suffer ourselves to be deluded with the evill designs and talk rather thanreason