Arguments in favours of it.
After having exposed the matter in this light, I think it can hardly, with reason, be urged, that notwithstanding it be admitted that gold and silver may change their proportion of value with regard to one another, yet still this does not prevent silver from remaining the standard, without any inconvenience; for the following reasons.
1mo. Because, when it is considered as a standard, it never ought to be looked upon as changing its value with regard to gold; but that gold ought to be considered as changing its value with regard to silver.
2do. Because being the measure itself, it is absurd to consider it as the thing measured; that therefore it retains all the requisites of an invariable scale; since it measures all things according to the proportion they bear to itself, which physically never can vary. And,
3tio. That a person who has borrowed a certain weight of silver from another, is obliged to repay the same weight of silver he had borrowed; although at that time silver should be of greater value than when he borrowed it.
Answers to these arguments.
I answer to the first argument: That if in fact silver becomes of more or less value with respect to merchandize, with respect to gold, and with respect to bank money, by there being a greater or less demand for it than there was before; I cannot see how calling it a standard, can remove this inconvenience, which is inseparable from the nature of the thing; nor how we can change a matter of fact, by changing our language, and by saying, that merchandize, gold, and bank money, become of more value, or of less value, with respect to silver, in proportion as the demand for them is greater or less. This language we must use, although we know for certain that these things remain in the exact relative proportion of quantity and demand as before: And although it should evidently appear, that a demand for silver has raised the price of it, with respect to every thing it measured the day before.
If the yard in a mercer’s shop should be subject to such revolutions, in consequence of the wood it was made of; and if in measuring a piece of stuff to a customer, which the mercer had bought by this yard the day before for 50 yards, he should find the piece measure but 40, it would not be easy to persuade him, I believe, that his piece was become shorter; but suppose he should have the curiosity to measure over again all the pieces in his shop, and that he should find exactly one fifth diminution upon the length of every one, would he not very rationally conclude that his yard was grown longer, and would he not run immediately to his neighbour’s shop and compare it?
As to the second argument, I agree that silver may at all times very exactly measure the value of things with respect to itself; but this gives us no idea of an universal measure.
I can measure the proportion of the length of things, with any rod or with any line, the length of which I know nothing about; but no body calls this measuring, because I cannot compare the things measured, with any other thing which I have not measured with the same rod or line, as I might easily do, had I measured with a foot, yard, or toise; consequently the intention of measuring in such a case is almost entirely lost.