The coin and current money of a country, is the representation of all its labour and commodities; so that in proportion as there is more or less of this representation, a greater or less quantity of it will go for the same quantity of the thing represented.
To this representation I cannot agree, and I apprehend it to be the source of error. A proper equivalent for labour and manufactures, may, in one sense, be called a representation; but there is no necessity for this equivalent to consist in coin. Are not meat and clothes an equivalent for personal service? Is not a free house and a bit of land, a very good equivalent for all the manufactures a country weaver can work up for me who am his landlord? If there were not one penny of coin in a country, would it follow, that there could be no alienation, or that every thing might there be got for nothing?
Coin has an intrinsic value; and when it comes into a country, it adds to the value of the country, as if a portion of territory were added to it: but it has no title to represent any thing vendible, by preference, or to be considered as the only equivalent for all things alienable. It is made a common price, on no other account than because of its rarity, its solidity, its being of a nature to circulate, and to suffer a correct division without end, and to carry its value along with it, which is a proper equivalent for every thing; and at the same time it is by its nature little liable to vary.
Were, indeed, a statesman to perform the operation of circulation and commerce, by calling in, from time to time, all the proprietors of specie in one body, and all those of alienable commodities, workmen, &c. in another; and were he, after informing himself of the respective quantities of each, to establish a general tariff of prices, according to our author’s rule; this idea of representation might easily be admitted; because the parcels of manufactures would then seem to be adapted to the pieces of the specie, as the rations of forage for the horses of an army are made larger or smaller, according as the magazines are well or ill provided at the time: but has this any resemblance to the operations of commerce?
The idea of coin being the representation of all the industry and manufactures of a country, is pretty; and has been invented for the sake of making a general rule for operating an easy distribution of things extremely complex in their nature. From this comes error. We substitute a complex term, sometimes in one sense, and sometimes in another, and we draw conclusions as if it expressed a fixed and determined idea.
If in algebra, x, y, z, &c. ever stood for more than a single idea, the science would become useless; but as they never represent but the very same notion, they never change their nature through all manner of transpositions.
It is not the same of terms in any other science, as abundantly appears from the question now before us: coin is called a representation, because it is an equivalent; and because it is a representation, it must bear an exact proportion to the thing represented. And since in some particular examples, this representation appears to hold; therefore the rule is made general, although circumstances may be different. If, for example, a merchant, or a private person, has upon hand a thousand pounds worth of grain, no doubt that the thousandth part of the merchandize is worth the thousandth part of the sum; because both are determined in their quantity and quality: but the parcels of this corn, though exactly proportioned to the price of the whole, do not draw their value from this proportion, but from the total value of the whole mass; which is determined from the complicated operations of demand and competition, as has been said, and not from the specie of the country, which can bear no proportion either to the quantity or quality of the grain.
There may be vast quantities of coin in a country of little industry; and, vice versa, coin is constantly an equivalent, but never a representation, more than any other equivalent which may be contrived. Were the doctrine of this second proposition true, every commodity in a country should be sold like a parcel of the grain in the foregoing example, by the rule of three; as the property of all the labour and manufactures of the country is to the part I intend to alienate, so is all the gold and silver in the country to the part I am entitled to receive. This way of regulating prices may be very ingenious, but it is not very common. I now proceed to the third and last proposition.
Increase the commodities, they become cheaper: increase the money, they rise in their value.
This proposition is much too general: the first part of it is commonly true, the last part is more commonly false.