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.
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