A confusion must necessarily be brought about between the conventional fixed value attached to pieces of gold and silver money and the actual variable value of the very matter of those pieces. The conventional value of a piece of silver corresponds to the value we have called its initial value, and we have seen it was possible to preserve to that initial value the character of absolute permanency. But how can its invariability be assured if a material support is given to it open to incessant fluctuations of value resulting from all the speculations to which what ever can be bought and sold is submitted? The very fact of the association of the unity of value with an actual marketable article takes away all stability from the base of our estimates of the value of things. If the price of any commodity,--for example, some article of food or manufacture,--rises in comparison with what it was 50 years or a century ago, it is often asked whether the augmentation is real or only apparent and due to the diminution in the value of the metal which supports the unity: it results clearly from what has been advanced that the variation in the value of metal goes for nothing if, _it be well understood that the quantity of money in use is supposed to remain exactly proportioned to the needs of the transactions_. But when monetary contractions take place, the implement necessary in transactions is wanting, the value of things in general falls, for those who are engaged in making transactions offer their goods at a reduced price to get the monetary implement without which they cannot effect their operations. It would evidently be the same if this implement instead of being in gold or silver, was in wood or paper; and still the same if it was represented only by comptabilist unities. Directly it is conceded that man must make transactions then, if an implement is indispensable to that end, be that implement paper or comptabilist unities, he will make sacrifices to procure it and will for this object part with some of his wealth, and therefore the value of things will in a general way fall. While if this implement is in excess, that is if there is monetary dilation, as excess of the implement is of no service to the great bulk of those who transact business, who only want what is necessary to effect their transactions and nothing more, it will be found that the value of things cannot be affected by this as it is in the preceding case.