XI.: Debasing the standard, would not prevent coins from being melted, or exported.

30. There are many well-meaning people, who think it the interest of their country, to keep the national coins from going abroad; and that this end might be accomplished, by debasing the standard of money. I shall not at present enter into the merits of this conceit of keeping our cash at home; nor inquire what influence such a scheme, if it could be effected, would have upon our commerce and credit; but I think that a very slight reflection is sufficient to convince any one, that the means proposed would not answer the end. An adulteration of our coin cannot remove or affect any one of those causes, whatever those may be, that bring foreign demands upon us for money: These demands must be satisfied, to the full weight of fine silver or fine gold. Foreigners will not be imposed upon by names, or by false measures; if our coins are adulterated, by being made either baser or lighter, they must have more of them; and probably even somewhat more than their due, from the unavoidable discredit attending any debasement of money. Foreign coins are every where treated as mere bullion; and should we debase ours, as much pure silver or pure gold, at least, would be carried abroad in these new coins, as now goeth in those of the present standard. Our own coins indeed, because of the free coinage, are in effect even at home, as much bullion as whilst they were in the mass; and the stamp of itself, is too weak to save them from the melting pot.

If the proportion between gold and silver coins, was brought and kept to a just par; this would prevent either of these coins from being melted or exported, preferable to the other; but it would not lessen the exportation upon the whole, excepting so far as coins made of one of these metals, as silver, for instance, might be sent abroad to purchase gold for coining. This is an evil we have laboured under, and the remedy is obvious, without medling with the standard of money.