But to this class I must beg leave to put a question: What title has any person to receive in payment one grain of silver or gold more than he had stipulated from his debtor at the time of contracting, because the government of Great Britain thinks proper to make a new regulation with respect to their coin? If it be true that every man has a right to complain of the debasement of the standard so far as he is thereby defrauded of that weight of the fine metals which he was entitled to receive, surely every man has a right to complain of the rising of the standard, who thereby becomes obliged to repay more weight of the fine metals than ever he received value for.
In justice and in common sense, the raising of the standard of the coin ought never to be allowed to benefit any person but those who have been unjustly sufferers by the debasement of it, nor ought it ever to be prejudicial to any person but to such as by the debasement have been unjustly gainers.
whose claim ought to be liable to a conversion,
In every contrast where neither of the parties can produce any palpable loss sustained by the former debasement of the standard, the alteration ought to have no manner of effect. All debts of whatever kind, ought to be liable to a fair conversion, as much as those contracted in guilders, florins, livres, &c. when they come to be paid in pounds sterling. The old and the new standards are not the same, because they carry the same denominations of value, any more than a piastre is a pound, because they begin with the same letter.
All the world must agree that the standard of queen Elizabeth is debased, and that a pound sterling is no longer worth 1718.7 grains troy fine silver. Every body must also agree that were the standard restored, merchandize of every kind ought to fall in value.
according to justice and impartiality.
If therefore, after the restitution, a person who has merchandize to buy, shall have the privilege to proportion his price according to the change of money, why should another who is a debtor be in a worse situation? Why should permanent contracts be obligatory according to language, and momentary contracts, such as sale, be obligatory according to things?
Two people hire each a servant, the one stipulates to pay twenty guineas wages, the other stipulates twenty-one pounds sterling: the standard is in a short time after restored in the manner we have been describing; can any thing be more absurd, than that he who stipulated the twenty guineas, shall be quit after the restitution, on paying the twenty guineas as before, and that he who stipulated the twenty-one pounds sterling, shall be obliged to pay twenty-one guineas?
What pretension therefore can any man who is possessed of a salary[salary], an annuity, or of a bond or other security for a sum due to him by another, have to be paid the same number of pounds sterling stipulated at first, when the pound comes to be increased in its intrinsic value 5 per cent. above the value it had when the obligation was contracted?