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16. If other leading commercial nations make gold the one standard of value, what will be the consequence if our government insist on making silver the standard for this country?

SECTION II.-SPECIE.

The precious metals, gold and silver, possess certain qualities, peculiarly combined, which give them special fitness to fulfil the functions of money. Hence, when prepared and marked for that purpose, they are called specie. These qualities may be particularly noticed as follows:

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1. Gold and silver have an intrinsic utility. Their brilliancy, their malleability, their resistance of corrosion, and their permanence, make them desirable for personal ornaments, for plate, and for the manifold decoration of temples, houses, and equipages. For this reason they have always had a charm for all sorts of people. Their use as money only enhances, and makes more constant and steady, their general desirableness.

2. These metals are obtainable only by labor; and the amount of labor necessary to obtain them is more invariable than that which pertains to other substances. Now and then one has stumbled upon a nugget of pure gold of great value; but ordinarily, gold and silver are obtained by labor in long and patient search, in washing sands, breaking rocks, reducing ores, and separating the pure metals from other substances. The amount produced is dependent on the labor employed.

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In respect to the two elements of value, desirableness, and cost measured by labor, gold and silver are permanent and uniform beyond any other products.

Hence their value is more stable than that of any thing else.

3. These metals concentrate a large amount of value in a small bulk. They are conveniently portable. One may easily carry in his pocket the value of a wagon-load of wheat or a car-load of cattle when put into the form of gold.

4. These substances are capable of minute division without loss. A gold eagle or a silver dollar may be divided into ten equal parts, and each part will have the value of just one-tenth of the original coin. Not so with diamonds, which also concentrate value. A large diamond is worth many times its weight in small diamonds; and, once broken into pieces, its original value can never be restored.

5. These metals are of uniform quality. Pure gold or silver is the same always and everywhere ; readily alloyed to make the coin harder, but easily restored to its original purity without loss.

6. The value of a definite portion of these substances can be easily verified. They are malleable, easily wrought into any shape, and capable of receiving and retaining a distinct impression. Their lustre, uniform weight, and resistance to the action of acids, make it easy to detect adulteration.

7. These metals are nearly indestructible by accident or use. No ordinary fire consumes them; they are not decomposed by atmospheric influences; they wear away very slowly.

8. These two metals are adapted to each other for the different exchanges, large and small, which the trade of the civilized world requires. Gold too mi

nutely divided would be counted with difficulty, and easily lost. For large exchanges silver would be inconvenient, on account of its great bulk. They are thus well adapted in use to supplement each other.

These metals are employed as the money of the world, not because ordained to this by authority of human governments, but because in the ordinance of nature they possess in peculiar degree those qualities so essential to represent precise amounts of value, and are ever exchangeable for the same amounts of value. In the strictest sense, these metals coined constitute the only real money universally recognized.

There is nevertheless a legitimate agency of government with respect to money. Men use money in exchanges for the same reason that they use hammers in driving nails, because they thus save time and labor, and the work is thereby better done. Yet the convenience of money may be increased by the action of the government in two ways.

First, By indicating a uniform instrument of exchange; that is, by establishing the precious metals as a legal tender. If I owe a man for a hat, and he will not take the silver I offer in payment, but demands beaver-skins, I may not be able to procure them: if, on the other hand, I offer him leather, and refuse to give him any thing else, he may be defrauded. To prevent disputes, the government needs to enact a law, specifying what shall be a

full and valid discharge of such an obligation when nothing definite has been agreed upon. Such a law need not interfere with special contracts for the exchange of particular objects.

Second, The government can, better than any other party, prepare the metals used as money for the purpose by coining. It is evident that the coining of money cannot be safely intrusted to individuals. It would present temptations to dishonesty, too great for ordinary human virtue. Hence, in all civilized countries, the coining of money is regarded as the sovereign act of the government through carefully selected agents. In our country, this, with all other rights of full sovereignty, is vested in the National Government alone. Congress has the exclusive power to coin money.

In the coinage three things must be regarded:First, The quality of the coin. The metal of the coinage must be of uniform purity. It is of advantage to mingle with the pure metal some portion of alloy, to make the coin harder, and the better to set the standard of purity at an exact point. But the precise measure of this adulteration should be fixed by law, invariable and clearly made known.

Second, The size of the coins should be adjusted to the convenience of exchange. If too large, they cannot well be carried about, nor fitted to different values; if too small, they are liable to be lost, and increase the trouble of counting. Also, different pieces should be adjusted to each other so as to be conveniently enumerated. For this, the decimal system, as adopted in the United States and in France, is probably preferable to any other.

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