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K The inconveniency perhaps would be less if silver was rated in the coin as much above its proper proportion to gold as it is at present rated below it; provided it was at the fame time enacted that silver should not be a legal tender for more than the change of a guinea; in the fame manner as copper is not a legal tender for more than the change of a shilling. No creditor Could in this case, be cheated in consequence of the high valuation of silver in coin ; as no creditor can at present be cheated in consequence of the high valuation of copper. The bankers only would suffer by this regulation. When a run comes upon them they sometimes endeavour to' gain time by paying in sixpences, and they would be precluded by this regulation from this discreditable method of evading immediate payment. They would be obliged in consequence to keep at all times in their coffers a greater quantity of cash than at present; and though this might no doubt be a considerable inconveniency to them, it would at the fame time be a considerable security to their creditors.

Three pounds seventeen shillings and tenpence halfpenny (the mint price of gold) certainly does not contain, even in our present excellent gold coin, more than an ounce of standard gold, and it maybe thought, therefore, should not purchase more standard bullion. But gold in coin is more convenient than gold in bullion, and though, in England, the coinage is free, yet the gold which is carried in bullion to the mint, can seldom be returned in coin to the

owner Owner till after a delay of several weeks. In the C H A P. prefent hurry of the mint, it could not be returned till after a delay of several months. This delay is equivalent to a small duty, and renders gold in coin fomewhat more valuable than an equal quantity of gold in bullion. If in the English coin filver was rated according to its proper proportion to gold, the price of filver bullion would probably fall below the mint price even without any reformation of the filver coin; the value even of the prefent worn and defaced filver coin being regulated by the value of the excellent gold coin for which it can be changed.

A fmall feignofage or duty upon the coinage of both gold and filver would probably increafe ftill more the fuperiority of thofe metals in coin above an equal quantity of either of them in bullion. The coinage would in this cafe increafe the value of the metal coined in proportion to the extent of this fmall duty; for the fame reafon that the fashion increafes the value of plate in proportion to the price of that fafhion. The fuperiority of coin above bullion would prevent the melting down of the coin, and would difcourage its exportation. If upon any public exigency it should become necessary to export the coin, the greater part of it would foon return again of its own accord. Abroad it could fell only for its weight in bullion. At home it would buy more than that weight. There would be a profit, therefore, in bringing it home again. In France a feignorage of about eight per cent. is

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BOOK imposed upon the coinage, and the French coin, when exported, is faid to return home again of its own accord.

The occasional fluctuations in the market price of gold and silver bullion arise from the same causes as the like fluctuations in that of all other commodities. The frequent loss of those metals from various accidents by sea and by land, the continual waste of them in gilding and plating, in lace and embroidery, in the wear and tear of coin, and in that of plate; require, in all countries which possess no mines of their own, a continual importation, in order to repair this lose and this waste. The merchant importers, like all other merchants, we may believe, endeavour, as well as they can, to suit their occasional importations to what, they judge, is likely to be the immediate demand. With all their attention, however, they sometimes over-do the buflnese, and sometimes undcr-do it. When they import more bullion than is wanted, rather than incur the risk and trouble of exporting it again, they are sometimes willing to fell a part of it for something less than the ordinary or average price. When, on the other hand, they import less than is wanted, they get something more than this price. But when, under all those occasional fluctuations, the market price either of gold or silver bullion continues for several years together steadily and constantly, either more or less above, or more or less below the mint price: we may be assured that this steady and constant, either superiority or inferiority of price, is the

effect effect of something in the state of the coin, which, at that time, renders a certain quantity of coin either of more value or of less value than the precise quantity of bullion which it ought to contain. The constancy and steadiness of the effect supposes a proportionable constancy and steadiness in the cause.

The money of any particular country is, at any particular time and place, more or less an accurate measure of value according as the current coin is more or less exactly agreeable to its standard, or contains more or less exactly the precise quantity of pure gold or pure silver which it ought to contain. If in England, for example, forty-four guineas and a half contained exactly a pound weight of standard gold, or eleven ounces of fine gold and one ounce of alloy, the gold coin of England would be as accurate a measure of the actual value of goods at any particular time and place as the nature of the thing would admit. But if, by rubbing and wearing, forty-four guineas and a half generally contain less than a pound weight of standard gold; the diminution, however, being greater in some pieces than in others; the measure of value comes to be liable to the fame fort of uncertainty to which all other weights and measures are commonly exposed. As it rarely happens that these are exactly agreeable to their standard, the merchant adjusts the price of his goods, as well as he can, not to what those weights and measures ought to be, but to what, upon an average, he finds by experience they actually are. In conse

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BOOK quence of a like disorder in the coin, the price of my goods comes, in the fame manner, to be adjusted, not to the quantity of pure gold or silver which the coin ought to contain, but to that which, upon an average, it is found by exper . rience it actually does contain.

By the money-price of goods, it is to be observed, I understand always the quantity of pure gold or silver for which they are fold, without any regard to the denomination of the coin. Six. millings and eight-pence, for example, in the time of Edward I., I consider as the fame money-price with a pound sterling in the present times; because it contained, as nearly as we car^ judge, the fame quantity of pure silver.

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CHAP. VI.

Of the component Parts of the Price of Commodities»

IN that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of land, the proportion between the quantities of labour necessary for acquiring different objects seems to be the only circumstance which can afford any rule for exchanging them for one another. If among a nation of hunters, for example, it usually costs twice the labour to kill a beaver which it does to kill a deer, one beaver should naturally exchange

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