CHAP. XXIV. USE OF GOLD AND SILVER.

201

difficulty of exportation to foreign countries hadruined the greater part of them V’

In this estimate of the consumption of goldand silver in France before the revolution is notincluded that which was used for watches. In1787, the number of watches sold in Paris isstated, in a memoir presented to the Bureau deCommerce, at twenty thousand annually, of whichone in twenty was of gold- 2 . If we suppose anequal quantity to be sold in the rest of that king-dom, the cases of that number of watches wouldrequire as much gold and silver as would makethe value of those metals consumed within Franceamount to somewhat more than a million sterling.A great part of the watches sold in France were,even at the time to which we refer, imported fromother countries—chiefly from Geneva , but somefrom Neufchatel.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century thegoldsmiths of Paris were under the inspection ofpublic officers, who, by a royal ordinance of 1703,were to attend the process of their manufacture,to ascertain the purity of the metal, and to forbidthe making basins and other articles heavier thanthe prescribed weight. They were bound to havetheir furnaces and forges in their open shops, inview of the public from the street, and to affix anotice of the fineness of the articles then in the

1 Herbin, vol. ii. p. 180.

2 Ibid, vol. ii. p. 172.