123. The actual quantity of money which it coins, in relation to its real property, is therefore only of consequence for convenience of exchange; but the proportion in which this quantity of money is divided among individuals expresses their various rights to greater or less proportions of the national property, and must not, therefore, be tampered with. The government may at any time, with perfect justice, double its issue of coinage, if it gives every man who has ten pounds in his pocket another ten pounds, and every man who had ten pence another ten pence; for it thus does not make any of them richer; it merely divides their counters for them into twice the number. But if it gives the newly-issued coins to other people, or keeps them itself, it simply robs the former holders to precisely that extent. This most important function of money, as a title-deed, on the non-violation of which all national soundness of commerce and peace of life depend, has been never rightly distinguished by economists from the quite unimportant function of money as a means of exchange. You can exchange goods--at some inconvenience, indeed, but you can still contrive to do it--without money at all; but you cannot maintain your claim to the savings of your past life without a document declaring the amount of them, which the nation and its government will respect. 124. And as economists have lost sight of this great function of money in relation to individual rights, so they have equally lost sight of its function as a representative of good things. That, for every good thing produced, so much money is put into everybody's pocket, is the one simple and primal truth for the public to know, and for economists to teach. How many of them have taught it? Some have; but only incidentally; and others will say it is a truism. If it be, do the public know it? Does your ordinary English householder know that every costly dinner he gives has destroyed forever as much money as it is worth? Does every well-educated girl--do even the women in high political position--know that every fine dress they wear themselves, or cause to be worn, destroys precisely so much of the national money as the labor and material of it are worth? If this be a truism, it is one that needs proclaiming somewhat louder.