y enhance each other's force.

75. They partly neutralize, since in so far as the gold is commodity, it
is bad currency, because liable to sale; and in so far as it is
currency, it is bad commodity, because its exchange value interferes
with its practical use. Especially its employment in the higher branches
of the arts becomes unsafe on account of its liability to be melted down
for exchange.

Again. They partly enhance, since in so far as the gold has acknowledged
intrinsic value, it is good currency, because everywhere acceptable; and
in so far as it has legal exchangeable value, its worth as a commodity
is increased. We want no gold in the form of dust or crystal; but we
seek for it coined, because in that form it will pay baker and butcher.
And this worth in exchange not only absorbs a large quantity in that
use,[35] but greatly increases the effect on the imagination of the
quantity used in the arts. Thus, in brief, the force of the functions is
increased, but their precision blunted, by their unison.

76. These inconveniences, however, attach to gold as a basis of currency
on account of its portability and preciousness. But a far greater
inconvenience attaches to it as the only legal basis of currency.
Imagine gold to be only attainable in masses weighing several pounds
each, and its value, like that of malachite or marble, proportioned to
its largeness of bulk;--it could not then get itself confused with the
currency in daily use, but it might still remain as its basis; and this
second inconvenience would still affect it, namely, that its
significance as an expression of debt varies, as that of every other
article would, with the popular estimate of its desirableness, and with
the quantity offered in the market. My power of obtaining other goods
for gold depends always on the strength of public passion for gold, and
on the limitation of its quantity, so that when either of two things
happen--that the world esteems gold less, or finds it more easily--_my
right of claim is in that degree effaced_; and it has been even gravely
maintained that a discovery of a mountain of gold would cancel the
National Debt; in other words, that men may be paid for what costs much
in what costs nothing. Now, it is true that there is little chance of
sudden convulsion in this respect; the world will not so rapidly
increase in wisdom as to despise gold on a sudden; and perhaps may [for
a little time] desire it more eagerly the more