198 MODERN MONETARY SYSTEMS 
coinage at a variable rate but with simultaneous variations, 
so as to maintain a par rate as between different gold 
currencies, it is indeed to be supposed that buyers and 
sellers who will be less anxious to know the gold content 
of their national monetary unit than to estimate the 
quantity of goods represented at home or abroad by the 
sum of money of account in question, would be quite 
indifferent to changes in the amount of gold theoretically 
contained in the dollar or in any other currency. 
We have indeed seen that before the French Revolution 
when very different currencies circulated concurrently— 
as indeed at the present day in China and for the same 
reasons—the public was interested in the content of fine 
metal in the currency, the value of which was determined 
by weighing. Similarly, exchange brokers in the most 
advanced countries are still concerned with the weight of 
coin in international payments. Butitis tobe observed that 
in general the public is completely indifferent to the metal 
content of currencies. The public may have a general pre- 
ference for metal currencies, of which the future value is 
more secure; but the man in the street at the present day, 
who can very well conceive what different kinds and quanti- 
ties of commodities are represented by the monetary unit in 
ordinary use, is incapable of any direct understanding of 
the value of a given weight of metal; and if he prefers for 
export a heavy coin instead of a light coin, the reason is 
that heavy coins represent a larger number of monetary units 
in the legal currency of foreign countries than light coins. 
Setting aside then, on the present assumption, the 
question of international settlements, it may be admitted 
that the public, having to receive or pay a given number 
of units of account, would not be inclined to give or exact 
a larger or smaller number according as this unit repre- 
sented a larger or smaller quantity of gold. And variations 
in the content of gold in the dollar would doubtless have 
no effect on prices except through the quantity of dollars 
in circulation, and except in the unlikely event of the 
variations in quantity being such that the Quantity Theory 
would come into play.