At home, it would buy more than that weight. There would be a profit, therefore, in bringing it
home again. In France, a seignorage of about eight per cent. is imposed upon the coinage, and
the French coin, when exported, is said to return home again, of its own accord.

The occasional fluctuations in the market price of gold and silver bullion arise from the same
causes as the like fluctuations in that of all other commodities. The frequent loss of those
metals from various accidents by sea and by land, the continual waste of them in gilding and
plating, in lace and embroidery, in the wear and tear of coin, and in that of plate, require, in all
countries which possess no mines of their own, a continual importation, in order to repair this
loss and this waste. The merchant importers, like all other merchants, we may believe,
endeavour, as well as they can, to suit their occasional importations to what they judge is
likely to be the immediate demand. With all their attention, however, they sometimes overdo
the business, and sometimes underdo it. When they import more bullion than is wanted, rather
than incur the risk and trouble of exporting it again, they are sometimes willing to sell a part
of it for something less than the ordinary or average price. When, on the other hand, they
import less than is wanted, they get something more than this price. But when, under all those
occasional fluctuations, the market price either of gold or silver bullion continues for several
years together steadily and constantly, either more or less above, or more or less below the
mint price, we may be assured that this steady and constant, either superiority or inferiority of
price, is the effect of something in the state of the coin, which, at that time, renders a certain
quantity of coin either of more value or of less value than the precise quantity of bullion
which it ought to contain. The constancy and steadiness of the effect supposes a
proportionable constancy and steadiness in the cause.

The money of any particular country is, at any particular time and place, more or less an
accurate measure or value, according as the current coin is more or less exactly agreeable to
its standard, or contains more or less exactly the precise quantity of pure gold or pure silver
which it ought to contain. If in England, for example, forty-four guineas and a half contained
exactly a pound weight of standard gold, or eleven ounces of fine gold, and one ounce of
alloy, the gold coin of England would be as accurate a measure of the actual value of goods at