196 ADAM SMITH. 



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 re- 

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

 ancient origin; for the Romans had first by one and 

 then by the other expedient, before the end of the 

 second Punic war, made the coin worth nominally two- 

 and-twenty times more than it originally was. 



Incited by a view of the dangers of taxation, perpe- 

 tuated by public debts 3 Dr. Smith strongly recommends 

 the increase of such taxes as are most according to prin- 

 ciple, and fall in with the four general maxims already 

 stated ; but above all, he recommends in what he admits 

 to be a kind of " New Utopia/' but not more useless and 

 chimerical than "the old one," a general union of the 

 whole empire, by giving both Ireland and all the colonies 

 representatives, and thus making all parts of our domi- 

 nion contribute to a fund for paying off the debt which 

 was contracted for the government and the defence of 

 them all. This plan, with its details, closes the work. 

 The recommendation as regards Ireland has been suc- 

 cessfully adopted and carried into execution. It was 

 soon made clear by the events of the American war that 

 no such incorporation of the distant provinces could be 



