 The early modern period was plagued by a shortage of coins, and of those in circulation, most were clipped or hammered. Gresham’s law, that bad coins drive out the good ones, explained this phenomenon very well. It was estimated that the average coin had only half of the metallic content that had been stipulated by the mint. This meant that countless people were filing the coins and melting the shavings into bullion for additional remuneration from the mint. It was illegal to tamper with coins, and for most countries of Western Europe, the death penalty applied, even if one was caught simply with the tools of the trade. Other commonplace illegal activities were counterfeiting paper banknotes, bribery, smuggling, and adulterating products for sale. It would be difficult to estimate the overall level of such activities, but a background assumption in the writings of most early modern economists was the understanding that criminal methods were widespread (see Wennerlind 2011). The demise of Spain had become a trope, insofar as it had been illegally drained of its American silver. As Hume noted, smugglers in the previous two centuries had taken the Spanish silver over the Pyrenees where French prices were one-tenth those in Spain (“Of the Balance of Trade” [1987: 312]). The money had saturated most where there was international trade. By the early seventeenth century, it was the Dutch East India Company that commanded the envy of European traders, and its legacy was such that Mexican silver coins continued to dominate Asian trade until the nineteenth century.