It is the same case with the coin.Nobody imagines, Ibelieve, that even the greater part of the annual coinage, amounting, for ten years together, before the late reformation of the gold coin, to upwards of eight hundred thousand pounds a year in gold, was an annual addition to the money before current in the kingdom.In a country where the expense of the coinage is defrayed by the government, the value of the coin, even when it contains its full standard weight of gold and silver, can never be much greater than that of an equal quantity of those metals uncoined; because it requires only the trouble of going to the mint, and the delay perhaps of a few weeks, to procure for any quantity of uncoined gold and silver an equal quantity of those metals in coin.But, in every country, the greater part of the current coin is almost always more or less worn, or otherwise degenerated from its standard.In Great Britain it was, before the late reformation, a good deal so, the gold being more than two per cent and the silver more than eight per cent below its standard weight.But if forty-four guineas and a half, containing their full standard weight, a pound weight of gold, could purchase very little more than a pound weight could of uncoined gold, forty-four guineas and a half wanting a part of their weight could not purchase a pound weight, and something was to be added in order to make up the deficiency.The current price of gold bullion at market, therefore, instead of being the same with the mint price, or L46 14s.6d., was then about L47 14s.and sometimes about L48.When the greater part of the coin, however, was in this degenerate condition, forty-four guineas and a half, fresh from the mint, would purchase no more goods in the market than any other ordinary guineas, because when they came into the coffers of the merchant, being confounded with other money, they could not afterwards be distinguished without more trouble than the difference was worth.Like other guineas they were worth no more than L46 14s.6d.If thrown into the melting pot, however, they produced, without any sensible loss, a pound weight of standard gold, which could be sold at any time for between L4714s.and L48 either of gold or silver, as fit for all the purposes of coin as that which had been melted down.There was an evident profit, therefore, in melting down new coined money, and it was done so instantaneously, that no precaution of government could prevent it.The operations of the mint were, upon this account, somewhat like the web of Penelope; the work that was done in the day was undone in the night.The mint was employed, not so much in making daily additions to the coin, as in replacing the very best part of it which was daily melted down.
Were the private people, who carry their gold and silver to the mint, to pay themselves for the coinage, it would add to the value of those metals in the same manner as the fashion does to that of plate.Coined gold and silver would be more valuable than uncoined.The seignorage, if it was not exorbitant, would add to the bullion the whole value of the duty; because, the government having everywhere the exclusive privilege of coining, no coin can come to market cheaper than they think proper to afford it.If the duty was exorbitant indeed, that is, if it was very much above the real value of the labour and expense requisite for coinage, false coiners, both at home and abroad, might be encouraged, by the great difference between the value of bullion and that of coin, to pour in so great a quantity of counterfeit money as might reduce the value of the government money.In France, however, though the seignorage is eight per cent, no sensible inconveniency of this kind is found to arise from it.
The dangers to which a false coiner is everywhere exposed, if he lives in the country of which he counterfeits the coin, and to which his agents or correspondents are exposed if he lives in a foreign country, are by far too great to be incurred for the sake of a profit of six or seven per cent.
The seignorage in France raises the value of the coin higher than in proportion to the quantity of pure gold which it contains.Thus by the edict of January 1726, the mint price of fine gold of twenty-four carats was fixed at seven hundred and forty livres nine sous and one denier one-eleventh, the mark of eight Paris ounces.The gold coin of France, making an allowance for the remedy of the mint, contains twenty-one carats and three-fourths of fine gold, and two carats one fourth of alloy.
The mark of standard gold, therefore, is worth no more than about six hundred and seventy-one livres ten deniers.But in France this mark of standard gold is coined into thirty Louis d'ors of twenty-four livres each, or into seven hundred and twenty livres.
The coinage, therefore, increases the value of a mark of standard gold bullion, by the difference between six hundred and seventy-one livres ten deniers, and seven hundred and twenty livres; or by forty-eight livres nineteen sous and two deniers.
A seignorage will, in many cases, take away altogether, and will, in all cases, diminish the profit of melting down the new coin.This profit always arises from the difference between the quantity of bullion which the common currency ought to contain, and that which it actually does contain.If this difference is less than the seignorage, there will be loss instead of profit.
