[Sidenote: The abuse of the terms _rising_ and _sinking_, and inaccuracy of speech.] _2do_, The second is owing to the common method of estimating the value, and the proportions between _gold_ and _silver_; _coin_ and _bullion_; _money_ and _merchandize_. The terms usually employed to express such combinations are, _rising_ and _sinking_, or the like: people employ these terms, without previously agreeing upon the thing which they are to consider as fixed. The value of one of the precious metals is constantly relative to that of the other; and yet, without attending to this, we sometimes consider the gold, and sometimes the silver, as the common measure; and while one is talking of gold as a common measure, the person he talks to is considering it perhaps as the thing measured. This inaccuracy, in supposing sometimes the one as fixed, and sometimes the other, involves us in great obscurities; especially when we speak upon such matters with those who have not distinct combinations of ideas: and if three or four people are engaged in a conversation upon money, every one using the same term in a different acceptation, the confusion which it causes is inextricable. In like manner, when we speak of coin and bullion, that of the two ought to be considered as fixed which changes its proportion of value the least with respect to all commodities. [Sidenote: Prices attached to denominations of coin.] Were prices attached to grains of silver and gold, bullion ought in that case to be considered as fixed; but as they are more attached to the denominations of the coin, coin ought to be considered as fixed. [Sidenote: _Coinage raises the value of coin_, is a more proper expression than _Coinage sinks the price of commodities_.] In the next place, in speaking of coin and commodities, we say, for example, that the imposition of coinage makes the prices of commodities sink. We do not, in this case, speak correctly; because if any thing ought to be considered as fixed, it is the relative proportion of value between the different sorts of commodities. In this case, therefore, I think it would be more proper to say, that coinage raises the value of coin, than that it sinks the value of commodities. [Sidenote: How to avoid such ambiguities in speech.] To prevent the ambiguity of such expressions from occasioning confusion, and not to depart too far from common language, I have frequently spoken of commodities as rising and sinking in their values with respect to coin; but I have at the same time observed the influence which that rising and sinking has upon the rising and sinking of the value of the pound sterling realized in it. [Sidenote: A case which cannot be resolved by this theory.]