The political oeconomy of modern states is so involved with the interests of commerce, that it is necessary at every step we make, to keep in our eye the combinations which arise from that quarter. Whatever tends to simplify an intricate theory, greatly assists the mind: dividing this book into two parts, seems, as it were, dividing the burden it has to carry: the principles already deduced may there ripen by a short pause, and the analogy of the matter which is to follow in the second part, where new combinations are taken in, will recall them to the mind and fix them in the memory. [Sidenote: Intricacy of this subject.] I am now to examine one of the nicest principles in the whole doctrine of money, to wit, the effects of imposing the price of coinage, and the duty of seignorage upon coin. When this question is considered in relation to all the combinations which arise, 1. from the nature of coin considered as a metal, and at the same time as a money of accompt; 2. from the influence this duty has upon the price of commodities; and 3. from the imposition as affecting, _directly_, the nation which lays it on, and all other nations trading with it _occasionally_: when all these combinations are taken together, I say nothing will be found more difficult than to reduce this question to a distinct theory. What I have to say upon it has found a place in this inquiry, rather with a view to suggest ideas to men of a better capacity, than from the hopes of satisfying my readers in every particular. [Sidenote: Recapitulation of some principles.] I have said, that gold and silver are commodities merely like every other thing. I have shewn the utter impossibility of their being a scale, or an invariable measure of value. I have observed that their being made into coin (_among trading nations_) has not the effect of rendring them less a commodity than they were before, except so far, as by that operation every piece, instead of being valued by its own weight, comes to be in the mean proportion of all the pieces which compose the currency: and I have shewn how the operations of trade are capable to sift out and establish this mean proportion, in spite of very great irregularities. These are the principles laid down in the first part, which we must keep in our eye while we examine the question.