VALUE OF A LIMITED COIN 25 
and disturb his enemies, but if clever and unscrupu- 
lous, he will arrange that very little of the apparent 
stock is real gold. Nearly every belligerent scrapes 
together every atom of gold he can get from the 
currency and elsewhere and sends it into neutral 
countries to purchase the things which he wants so 
much more. Hence it is perfectly natural that gold 
should lose value and that the general level of prices 
should rise in the countries which have and retain 
a money system in which the unit of account is 
equivalent to a quantity of gold bullion. 
Thus the conclusion to which this section of our 
inquiry has led us is that where the unit of account in 
money reckonings is either a fixed quantity of free 
metal (e.g. gold) or a coin equivalent to such a 
quantity, the value of money (and therefore the 
general level of prices) depends on the value of the 
metal, which is determined in the same way as that 
of other commodities by the same kinds of influences 
acting on demand and supply. 
$ 4. The value of money or general level of prices where 
thew + ‘ac. ~*7:acoin of which the issue is 
limiteu. 
So much for the simplest monetary system, in 
which the unit of account is literally or in effect a 
definite weight of a certain metal. The system which 
can be most conveniently taken next is that in which 
the unit of account is still a coin, but a coin the value 
of which is not indeed wholly divorced, but is to some 
extent separated from the value of the bullion of 
which it is made. 
The coinage of a particular metal may be * free,” 
in the sense that anv one may insist on having any 
amount of tha! w. ... coin: “or him by the Mint, 
without bein ...._2l 1s or done without charge. 
After all, we © « refle~* coin is a manufactured