If the war were with the nation within whose territory the coinage is, the first act of war, or reprisal, might be to arrest this operation, with the implements and materials coined and uncoined, to be used at their discretion.
The reputation and principles of the present undertaker are safeguards against the abuses of a coinage, carried on in a foreign country, where no checks could be provided by the proper sovereign, no regulations established, no police, no guard exercised; in short, none of the numerous cautions hitherto thought essential at every mint; but in hands less entitled to confidence, these will become dangers. We may be secured, indeed, by proper experiments as to the purity of the coin delivered us according to contract, but we cannot be secured against that which, though less pure, shall be struck in the genuine die, and protected against the vigilance of Government, till it shall have entered into circulation.
We lose the opportunity of calling in and re-coining the clipped money in circulation, or we double our risk by a double transportation.
We lose, in like manner, the resource of coining up our household plate in the instant of great distress.
We lose the means of forming artists to continue the works, when the common accidents of mortality shall have deprived us of those who began them.
In fine, the carrying on a coinage in a foreign country, as far as the Secretary knows, is without example; and general example is weighty authority.
He is, therefore, of opinion, on the whole, that a mint, whenever established, should be established at home; that the superiority, the merit, and means of the undertaker, will suggest him as the proper person to be engaged in the establishment and conduct of a mint, on a scale which, relinquishing nothing in the perfection of the coin, shall be duly proportioned to our purposes.
And, in the meanwhile, he is of opinion the present proposals should be declined.
IV.—Opinion on the question whether the Senate has the right to negative the grade of persons appointed by the Executive to fill Foreign Missions.
New York, April 24, 1790.