altérer les monnaies, to debase the coinage

refontes inégales, new coinage of a value not proportionate to other coinage in use. Thus new crowns (écus) were coincd of less intrinsic value than the old, and therefore not maintaining the proper proportion to the quarter-crowns or "quarts" which remained in circulation. Foreign merchants preferred to be paid in old "quarts" rather than in the new debased crowns. Consequently the "quarts" were taken out of the country, and while abroad were re-coined into crowns. The coiners made the same profit as the French government had made by coining thèse inferior crowns, viz. the différence between the intrinsic values of the old and new crowns, and the loss fell upon the French nation.

1. 26. ne savaient pas ô^<r. It was a common fallacy, now exploded, that expenditure on mère luxury, such as generally prevails about a court, is profitable to a country through giving employment to a number of persons. This employment is profitable in an économie sensé when it leads to the production of fresh capital, but not when the articles produced are themselves useless and unproductive. Thus it ail dépends on the nature of the industry encouraged, and Voltaire's statement is only partially true.

1. 156. appauvrie par la guerre. Indirectly, however, England was enriched by war, for before the daysof Free Trade war led to commerce. The city of London wrote under the statue of Chatham that he "made commerce to flourish by war," meaning that his conquests in the Indies and elsewhere opened new fields to English trade. Under the System that then prevailed, the profits of trade with colonies were monopolized by the country which had founded or conquered them.

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