Mr. Tomline, a great proprietor and landbuyer in Suffolk, and
a mien of much ability and many crotchets, will have it that as the Mint receives gold and returns sovereigns, so it ought to receive silver and return shillings. Indeed, if we rightly remember some previous utterances of his upon the subject, he holds that the law supports his view. Meeting no response to his own complaint, he has told some labourers of his to complain to Mr. Lowe that as fie will not coin the silver which Mr. Tomline sends him, and on .which he depends to pay them, they are thrown out of work,—of -course a mere faces de parler, as Mr. Tomline was heir to a bishop -of the old and plethoric kind. Mr. Lowe writes back a most amusing answer, which, however, entirely evades the sub- ject-matter of complaint. If a man offers a pig, he says, and the butcher does not buy it, he goes to another butcher who wants pigs. The Mint is only refusing to buy pigs it does not want. Very pat, no doubt, only no butcher has a legal 'monopoly of the right to turn pig into sausages, and the Mint has. if Mr. Tomline coins for himself he is imprisoned, and his point is that the Mint is bound to do the work of which it has the monopoly. Why, if he pays all charges, is that so utterly unrea- sonable ? Because there is silver coin enough already, if there is, not because some butchers want pigs and others do not.
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