WEALTH OF NATIONS. 20)1 



for a war to be raised by taxes within the year, or 

 were this the general rule, then would the reluctance 

 to engage in war, and the readiness to make peace 

 after the war had been begun, be incalculably increased 

 and universally diffused ; and a loan might always be 

 resorted to as an exception to the rule when public 

 feelings were directed against continuing a war abso- 

 lutely necessary for the honour, that is, for the ex- 

 istence of the State. These I place as synonymous 

 ideas, because no war, however short, can ever be 

 beneficial on a calculation of profit and loss ; and thus 

 only those wars are justifiable on sound policy which 

 are required by the necessity of averting national 

 disgrace, and are entered into for the national inde- 

 pendence, placed in imminent peril by submitting to 

 insult, as a man's whole fortune is by consenting to 

 pay money under a threat, or submitting to any other 

 extortion. But for this consideration no one would 

 defend an action, or sue a debtor for a small sum of 

 money, even if his adversary admitted himself to be 

 in the wrong. 



The payment, or the escape from the payment of 

 debts, forms an important subject of consideration in 

 this discussion. Generally speaking, the latter course 

 has been taken when the burthen became heavy. The 

 most common expedient, the most hurtful, and the 

 most disgraceful, has been tampering with the coin. 

 This has been done in two ways, one by raising its 

 denomination, making, for instance, every pound be 

 called two pounds ; the other, by debasing it with alloy: 

 and these two expedients differ only in the form, 

 the one being an act of open violence, the other an act 

 of secret fraud ; but both have the effect of cheating 

 all creditors, not only those of the State, but those of 

 private debtors, to the amount of the difference between 

 the two nominal values in the one case, and the two 

 real values in the other. Most countries have had 

 recourse to one or both of these expedients, and it is 



