the value, the quantity itself will (by a sort of self-acting machinery) be kept at the amount consistent with that standard of prices—at the amount necessary for performing, at those prices, all the business required of it.
Chapter VII. Of A Double Standard And Subsidiary Coins.
§ 1. Objections to a Double Standard.
Though the qualities necessary to fit any commodity for being used as money are rarely united in any considerable perfection, there are two commodities which possess them in an eminent and nearly an equal degree—the two precious metals, as they are called—gold and silver. Some nations have accordingly attempted to compose their circulating medium of these two metals indiscriminately.
There is an obvious convenience in making use of the more costly metal for larger payments, and the cheaper one for smaller; and the only question relates to the mode in which this can best be done. The mode most frequently adopted has been to establish between the two metals a fixed proportion [to decide by law, for example, that sixteen grains of silver should be equivalent to