1mo. No money made of gold or silver can circulate long, without losing of its weight, although it all along preserves the same denomination. This represents the contracting a pair of compasses which had been rightly adjusted to the scale. Such a defect must appear striking, when we reflect upon the principles (already laid down) which necessarily influence the fixing of a standard.
It is inaccurately coined.
2do. Another inconvenience proceeds from the fabrication of money. Supposing the faith of Princes who coin money to be inviolable, and the probity, as well as capacity, of those to whom they commit the inspection of the fineness of the metals to be sufficient, it is hardly possible for workmen to render every piece exactly of a proper weight, or to preserve the due proportion between pieces of different denominations; that is to say, to make every ten sixpences exactly of the same weight with every crown piece and every five shillings struck in a coinage. In proportion to such inaccuracies, the parts of the scale become unequal.
The coinage adds to its value without adding to its weight.
3tio. Another inconvenience, and far from being inconsiderable, flows from the expence requisite for the coining of money. This expence adds to its value as a manufacture, without adding any thing to its weight. I shall take notice, in the proper place, of the consequences which attend this inconvenience, even to nations where coinage is free.
The value of it may be arbitrarily changed.
4to. The last inconvenience I shall mention, is, that by fixing the money of account entirely to the coin, without having any independent common measure (to mark and control these deviations from mathematical exactness, which are either inseparable from the metals themselves, or from the fabrication of them) the whole measure of value, and all the relative interests of debtors and creditors, become at the disposal not only of workmen in the mint, of Jews who deal in money, of clippers and washers of coin, but they are also entirely at the mercy of Princes, who have the right of coinage, and who have frequently also the right of raising or debasing the standard of the coin, according as they find it most for their present and temporary interest.
Trade profits of the smallest defects in the coin.
Several of the inconveniences we have here enumerated, may appear trifling, and so they are found to be in countries where commerce is little known; but the operations of trade surpass in nicety the conceptions of any man but a merchant; and as a proof of this, it may be affirmed with truth, that one shilling can hardly lose a grain of its weight, either by fraud or circulation, without contributing by that circumstance, towards the diminution of the standard value of the money-unit, or pound sterling, over all England, as I hope to be able to shew both by reason and facts.
All and every one of these inconveniences to which coin is exposed, disappear in countries where the use of pure ideal money of account is properly established.