This coin, I say, never will be exported, as long as any uncoined metals can be found in the country: and if upon a national distress it is thought fit to facilitate the exportation of it, the state may (as we observed above) appoint the mint to receive it back, in order to melt it down into ingots, stamped with the mark of sterling, repaying to the bearer —— _per cent._ of the coinage. 3_tio_, The trade of paying off foreign balances will then become a particular branch of business: of which we shall treat more at large, when we come to examine the principles of exchange. All that is necessary to be said in this place, is to recal the principle we have mentioned above, viz. that when a nation cannot pay in her metals, manufactures, and natural produce, what she owes to strangers, she must pay in her solid property; that is, she must mortgage the revenue of such property, for a capital _borrowed out of the country_, which capital she must employ for the payment of her foreign debts. This operation then should be performed by a regular and systematic plan. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAP. XX. _Objections to this Doctrine._ That bank notes can never be received as specie, but from a persuasion that they may be exchanged for it on demand. To this I answer, that it is sufficient they be received as value; and that they answer every purpose in carrying on alienation. The use of _money_ is to keep the reckoning between parties, who are _solvendo_; the use of specie or coin is to avoid the inconvenience of giving credit to persons who perhaps may not be so. When merchants make delivery in accompt, they then give credit to their customers: when they sell for bank bills, they give credit to the bank: when they are paid in coin, they give credit to no body; because they receive the real value in the coin. Where then is the difference between receiving the real value, and receiving an obligation for it, concerning the validity of which every one in the country is perfectly satisfied? Is there a merchant, in any country in the world, who will sell one farthing upon an hundred pounds cheaper to a person who pays in coin, than to another who pays in good paper; unless the extrinsic circumstances of the country should, at that time, give an advanced price to the _metal_ of which the coin is made. Money, we have said, ought to be invariable in its value: coin never can be so, because it is both _money_ and _merchandize_: money, with respect to the denomination it carries by law; merchandize, with respect to the metal it is made of. But it is urged, that if I have coin I may pay any where within the commercial world, at the expence of transportation, and insurance. I grant this to be true.