ABSTRACT
The precious metals are the common standard that serves to measure all values of the business world, but every government makes them specially suitable for this function by coinage. Thus, the weight and the fineness of the precious metals is regulated in an entirely uniform manner, with a public guarantee. Sometimes a government has levied on coinage a profit totally disproportionate to its advances; it has altered either the weight, or the fineness of the coinage; for each mark of silver, it has issued only seven ounces in guineas, and declared that these seven ounces are fully equal to the eight it had received. Coinage gives rise to another problem and one which, for a moment, baffles the mind. It concerns the proportion of the two precious metals, and the motives which can determine the choice of one or the other, or both, at the same time, as the monetary unit.
