CHAP. XXVIII. TO OTHER PRECIOUS METALS.

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purposes may have increased the stock of thelatter, or have increased it at all, is a matter ofgreat doubt. It must depend on the quantity ofthe latter which is actually in existence, and onthe degree of loss to which that quantity is liable.Many persons have indulged in conjectures onboth those topics. Some have estimated thevalue of the gold and silver in the form ofutensils and ornaments to be three, and othersfour, times as much as that of the coin. Theyappear, however, to have taken only a partial andlocal view of the subject, and to have come totheir conclusions from observations made in Eng-land, where, undoubtedly, the whole weight ofgold and silver in other shapes is far greater thanthat in coin.

An analysis of the classes of society in thiscountry may do something to assist conjecture.There probably are in England ten thousandfamilies, consisting of about one hundred andfifty thousand individuals, including children anddomestics, who are in possession of articles ofgold and silver whose value by weight, when di-vested of the additions made by the tax, by theworkmanship, and by the profits of the manu-facturer and the retailer, may together amountto five hundred pounds for each family; or maybe worth, as mere bullion, five million poundssterling, although it may have cost to the pos-sessors much more than double that sum. We