[Sidenote: Answ. Because it is perplexed with jargon.] ANSW. This I ascribe chiefly to the introduction of a money-jargon, employed by people who have had the management of mints, or who have been practical merchants, without knowing any thing of the theory of their business. [Sidenote: The denominations of coin are confounded with the intrinsic value of it.] As long as money went by weight, and was considered as gold and silver bullion, the whole doctrine of it remained clear and intelligible: but the introduction of a numerary value, or denominations of money of accompt, sometimes attached to one quantity of the metals, sometimes to another; and the interest of Princes, which made them endeavour to persuade their subjects that the stamp of the coin was sufficient to give a value to it; has both introduced an unintelligible language, and has really involved the subject with so many extraneous circumstances, that when we consider every thing, the perplexity is not much to be wondered at. I shall now endeavour to reduce all these perplexities under some general heads. [Sidenote: The terms metal, money, coin, bullion, and price, are all considered as synonimous.] _1mo_, The first is, confounding ideas quite different in themselves. The terms _gold_ and _silver_, _money of accompt_, _coin_, _bullion_, and _price_, are often understood and made use of as synonimous, although no things can be more different. [Sidenote: What is meant by _metal_?] The terms _gold_ and _silver_ should convey to us no other idea than that of pure physical substances. [Sidenote: What by _money_?] That of _money of accompt_ represents an invariable scale for measuring value. [Sidenote: What by _coin_?] _Coin_ conveys the idea of the public authority ascertaining the exact proportion of fine and alloy in a mixed metal, and the realizing, in a determinate weight of it, the invariable scale of money, sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly. [Sidenote: What by _bullion_?] _Bullion_ carries the idea of certain determinate mixtures of the metals, commonly ascertained by some public stamp or other, and drawing their value exactly from the proportion of the fine metals they contain, the workmanship being considered as of no value. [Sidenote: What by _price_?] _Price_, again, when considered as consisting in coin, is a more complex idea still. In it are comprehended the value of the metals; the authority of the stamp for the currency; the actual value of the coin as a manufacture, above the value of it as a metal; the common and universal equivalent of all things alienable; and the mean value of the currency of which _price_ is supposed to contain exact aliquot parts, when perhaps it does not. The ideas, therefore, of _gold_ and _silver_, of _money_, of _coin_, of _bullion_, and of _price_, are all different; they are commonly confounded, both in speaking and in writing: from this arises the first cause of perplexity.