by writing new notes, their two thousand pounds are still worth ten huts and a cask of biscuit.  And the law of relative value is the same for all the world, and all the people in it, and all their property, as for ten men on a rock.  Therefore, money is truly and finally lost in the degree in which its value is taken from it (ceasing in that degree to be money at all); and it is truly gained in the degree in which value is added to it.  Thus, suppose the money coined by the nation be a fixed sum, and divided very minutely (say into francs and cents), and neither to be added to nor diminished.  Then every grain of food and inch of lodging added to its possessions makes every cent in its pockets worth proportionally more, and every gain of food it consumes, and inch of roof it allows to fall to ruin, makes every cent in its pockets worth less; and this with mathematical precision.  The immediate value of the money at particular times and places depends, indeed, on the humors of the possessors of property; but the nation is in the one case gradually getting richer, and will feel the pressure of poverty steadily everywhere relaxing, whatever the humors of individuals may be; and, in the other case, is gradually growing poorer, and the pressure of its poverty will every day tell more and more, in ways that it cannot explain, but will most bitterly feel.

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.  You can exchange goods—­at some inconvenience, indeed, but you can still contrive to do it—­without money at all; but you cannot maintain your claim to the savings of your past life without a document declaring the amount of them, which the nation and its government will respect.