The remedies and palliatives for these three inconveniencies once discovered, comes the last question, viz. How, when other expedients prove ineffectual for the payment of a balance, the same may be paid by the means of credit, without the intervention of coin; and who are those who should conduct that operation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAP. II. _How to determine exactly the true and intrinsic value of the Metals, Coin, or Money, in which a Balance to foreign Nations is to be paid._ This first question regards the whole mass of reciprocal payments, as well as that of the balance. Every payment to be made of a determinate and fixed value; that is to say, of a liquidated debt, must be paid in a value equally determinate in its nature. This I suppose to be the case, whether payment be made in the precious metals unmanufactured, bullion, or in a nation’s coin, or in denominations of money of account. All payment in merchandize, except bullion, must suffer conversions of value before the debts can be liquidated. Money of accompt, which is what we understand by denominations, we have defined to be a scale of equal parts, calculated to determine the value of things, relatively to one another. It must, therefore, be by the money of accompt of different nations, that the value of bullion and of coin can be determined. When coin is introduced, the denominations of money are realized in a determinate quantity of the precious metals, and the fabrication of the bullion into coin, raises the value of that commodity, bullion, like the manufacturing of every other natural production. When coin, therefore, is employed in paying sums according to the legal denomination which it carries, it is money, not merchandize; but when it is given at any other rate than its denomination, it is merchandize, not money. In the third book, we have shewn how utterly impossible it is to realize with exactness, the denominations of money of accompt, in the metals which are constantly varying in their value, and exposed to waste in circulation. We have shewn, by many examples, how, in fact, the value of the pound sterling has been subject to great vicissitudes of late, from the great disorder of the coin. The coin of France is, indeed, upon a better footing in point of uniformity of weight, than ours; and the proportion of the metals in it comes nearer their present value in the market: but then as oft as the balance turns against France, the high imposition upon her coinage, exposes the coin to great fluctuations of value, when compared with bullion in the Paris market. This is also to be ascribed to the imperfection of the metals when used as money, while they are merchandize at the same time.