a part of their cost of production, viz.: that which they have to pay their workmen, their older creditors, and in part, also, their furnishers of raw material, to rise in a less degree than the paper money has declined in value.(927) This is indeed a very inequitable advantage accorded to private individuals in the face of the universal distress of the country.(928)(929) And these bad consequences are aggravated by the downward-path principle which a depreciated paper money always involves. The state whose financial distress introduced the evil, sees a great portion of its revenues melt away before its eyes;(930) while in what concerns its outlay, nothing is more calculated to mislead it than such an imagined creation out of nothing. And a thing which greatly contributes to this its the frightful sensitiveness of a depreciated paper currency in the presence of complications of foreign politics, a quality which may cause the government as many inconveniences from without as the issue of its paper money produced conveniences to it at home.(931) Hence recourse is had to additional issues of paper, which are easily increased in the same measure as the rate of exchange (_Cours_) has declined.(932) Great private interests operate in the same direction. Between the increase of the volume of the paper currency in circulation and its consequent depreciation, some time always elapses; and in the mean time, either the purchasing power of the money-owner or his loaning capital is really greater than before. The former increases the demand for commodities, the latter facilitates their coming into existence. However, the flight of speculation with which the increase of paper money is wont to be accompanied(933) in the beginning depends on an error shared by many men as to its true value. Hence it does not last long, and the critical shriveling up of the inflated bubbles is greater in proportion to what the previous dimensions of these bubbles were. And now many believe that the nation’s business or economy might be kept on its course by new emissions of paper money; and the wise ones hope, at least, to be able thereby to postpone the catastrophe long enough to enable themselves to get their property into a safe condition. And in fact, the restoration of a depreciated currency is accompanied by crises entirely similar to those which followed its first decline; only they are in an opposite direction.(934) And hence conscientious statesmen are frequently deterred from seeking to effect such a restoration. Yet the darkest side of a paper currency severed of due connection with precious metal-money consists in the frequent and violent fluctuations of value to which it is subject.(935) The consequence of these fluctuations is, that every commercial transaction, every credit-transaction, and even every act of saving, in which money plays any part, is made to bear the impress of a game of chance;(936) a consequence of far and deep reaching influence,