country of the world, I believe, the avarice and injustice of princes and
sovereign states, abusing the confidence of their subjects, have by degrees
diminished the real quantity of metal, which had been originally contained
in their coins. The Roman as, in the latter ages of the republic, was
reduced to the twenty-fourth part of its original value, and, instead of
weighing a pound, came to weigh only half an ounce. The English pound and
penny contain at present about a third only ; the Scots pound and penny
about a thirty-sixth ; and the French pound and penny about a sixty-sixth
part of their original value. By means of those operations, the princes and
sovereign states which performed them were enabled, in appearance, to pay
their debts and fulfil their engagements with a smaller quantity of silver
than would otherwise have been requisite. It was indeed in appearance only ;
for their creditors were really defrauded of a part of what was due to them.
All other debtors in the state were allowed the same privilege, and might
pay with the same nominal sum of the new and debased coin whatever they had
borrowed in the old. Such operations, therefore, have always proved
favourable to the debtor, and ruinous to the creditor, and have sometimes
produced a greater and more universal revolution in the fortunes of private
persons, than could have been occasioned by a very great public calamity.

It is in this manner that money has become, in all civilized nations, the
universal instrument of commerce, by the intervention of which goods of all
kinds are bought and sold, or exchanged for one another.

What are the rules which men naturally observe, in exchanging them either
for money, or for one another, I shall now proceed to examine. These rules
determine what may be called the relative or exchangeable value of goods.

The word VALUE, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and
sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the