others consider it as a metal.
But although there be many who look no farther than at the stamp on the coin, there are others whose sole business it is to examine its intrinsic worth as a commodity, and to profit of every irregularity in the weight and proportion of metals.
By the very institution of coinage, it is implied, that every piece of the same metal, and same denomination with regard to the money-unit, shall pass current for the same value.
It is, therefore, the employment of those money jobbers, as I shall call them, to examine, with a scrupulous exactness, the precise weight of every piece of coin which comes into their hands.
Operations of money jobbers when the coin deviates from the market proportion of the metals, or from the legal weight.
The first object of their attention, is, the price of the metals in the market: a jobber finds, at present, that with 14.5 pounds of fine silver bullion, he can buy one pound of fine gold bullion.
They melt down when the metals in it are wrong proportioned.
He therefore buys up with gold coin, all the new silver as fast as it is coined, of which he can get at the rate of 15.2 pounds for one in gold; these 15.2 pounds silver coin he melts down into bullion, and converts that back into gold bullion, giving at the rate of only 14.5. pounds for one.
By this operation he remains with the value of 7⁄10 of one pound weight of silver bullion clear profit upon the 15½ pounds he bought; which 7⁄10 is really lost by the man who inadvertently coined silver at the mint, and gave it to the money jobber for his gold. Thus the state loses the expence of the coinage, and the public the convenience of change for their guineas.
And when the coin is of unequal weight.