Page:Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A - Karl Marx.djvu/149

Rh since in the discharge of their function of coins they are taken at the same value, the sovereign weighing a quarter of an ounce passing for no more than the sovereign which only stands for a quarter of an ounce, the full-weight sovereigns are subjected in the hands of unscrupulous owners to surgical operations which produce artificially what the circulation process has caused in a natural way to their more light-weighted brothers. They are clipped and reduced and the superfluous gold fat lands in the melting pot. If 4,672½ gold sovereigns when put on one side of the weighing scale weigh on an average only 800 ounces instead of 1200, they will buy when brought to the gold market only 800 ounces of gold; that is, the market price of gold would rise above its mint price. Every coin, even if of full weight would pass in its mint form for less than in bullion form. The full weight sovereigns would be reconverted into bullion, a form in which a greater quantity of gold is always worth more than a smaller quantity. As soon as this decline of metallic weight would affect a sufficiently large number of sovereigns to bring about a permanent rise of the market price of gold above its mint price, the reckoning names of the coins, though remaining the same, would begin to denote a smaller quantity of gold. That is to say, the standard of money would change and gold would be coined in the future according to this new standard. By virtue of its idealization as a medium of circulation, gold would react upon and change the legally determined ratios under which it acted as the standard of price. The same revolution would be repeated after a certain length of time and thus gold