Debasing the standard of money would invalidate all preceding contrasts; and yet, by its affecting credit, might prove i

17. As our laws do not directly specify the quantities of silver that ought to be contained in certain coins and sums of money, but annex their sanctions, as it were, to the names only of coins; should our coins be legally debased, all contracts whatsoever now subsisting among us, would be so far vacated or annulled, as this debasement amounted to; every creditor would lose in that proportion of his just right, and every man of property might be greatly injured, before he could have it in his power to right himself. Supposing, as before, the adulteration in the coin to be one twentieth part; the lawyers would stand to it, that 19 shillings, or so much silver as used to be contained in 19 shillings, would be a full discharge for a debt of a pound sterling; and so proportionably of all debts whatsoever.

There are a thousand cases, wherein creditors should show compassion to their distressed debtors, and take such compositions from them, as they are enabled to make. But to make a kind of an universal composition for debts, without any distinction of cases, is the ready way to the destruction of all credit; and such a law, instead of being advantageous to those whom it would seem to favour, might prove the very means of their utter ruin: Their being disengaged from a part of their debt, would be but a poor consolation in the distresses they would be likely to be thrown into, by their exasperated creditors.