The great master of government and political oeconomy well understands this doctrine. He is now spending his treasure, not his income. He is then in the state of the debtors, and accordingly is regularly every year debasing the standard of the S——n coin. This debasement, I suppose, regularly takes place after the contributions for the year are paid. So soon as the war is over, and that this oeconomical Prince shall return to the state of creditor, he will, I suppose, suppress the currency of all this bad money, and restore the standard. That is to say, he has during the war been ruining all the class of creditors in permanent contracts (the S——n nobility) and when the peace is re-established their own Prince may indemnify them, if he pleases, by restoring the former value of the unit. All sudden revolutions are hurtful; but necessity has no law[3]. Footnote 3: Writ in the year 1760. This, in a few words, is, I think, the answer to the question proposed. Princes have for several centuries, in almost every nation in Europe, been gradually debasing the standard of their money-unit; and the debts they have contracted during the debasement have constantly been an argument against the restoring it. But had they first regulated all their debts upon the footing of the last debasement, stipulating with their creditors that they were to be paid upon the footing of the then currency, that is to say, according to the French stile, _au cours du jour_ of the stipulation; they then might, without any advantage to their creditors, and with great profit to themselves, have restored the standard, and so prepared the means of executing the same operation as before, upon a new emergency. [Sidenote: Writers against this practice have used wrong arguments to dissuade Princes from it.] Those who have writ against this practice of debasing the standard, have made use of wrong arguments to dissuade Princes from following such a measure. They have first represented it as hurtful to their own interest. This we have seen is not always true. They have also endeavoured to prove that it is vastly prejudicial to commerce. This is the great point laboured by Dutot, in his _Reflexions Politiques sur le Commerce_; but to very little purpose. All the facts and arguments he has produced to prove (by the source of exchange) that the variations made in France in the standard value of their crown of three livres did hurt to the trade of that nation, prove nothing at all, as it would be easy to shew, were this a proper place. The hurt done to manufactures is greater; but, in a trading nation, those establishments being under the influence and direction of merchants, who are perfectly instructed as to every consequence of such alterations, the manufacturers, after a very short time, raise their prices to the full proportion of the increase in the denomination of the coin. [Sidenote: The proper arguments against it are three.]