I still have a word to say on the use of individuals’ superfluities that goes beyond the usual purpose for which the things exist, which the Prince must prevent. Coined money, for example, is often melted down and used by individuals for dishes and other things foreign to its purpose, which all nations have agreed is to facilitate commerce and the exchange of life’s necessary and convenient things. The coins that are (353) diverted from their ordinary use immediately leave commerce, and this prevents their circulation, which may have gone on forever in continual repetitions, while the things that are made from them remain idle or perish altogether (like braid) in the hands of a single individual. The trade which often stops from the scarcity of money and the disruptions that result from it sometimes has no other source than that of which I speak. For although this quantity of coins that individuals who have too many remove from commerce can be replaced by credit and is not in itself large enough to cause scarcity, it is nevertheless capable of arousing mistrust and fear (354) in the minds of others and of leading them to keep their coins on the slightest suspicion that money will become scarce because they perceive a lack of normal circulation. It only takes two or three people to start such a disturbance and to seduce others. Then those who could buy cut back their spending to necessities. Those who should sell do so only for cash in hand, for the purpose of having and keeping coins and protecting themselves against a famine, which they fear. This is why commerce stops and everyone ruins themselves because of their fear, whose cause, however, has very little depth. We only have to cast our eyes over the commerce (355) of life and to consider it attentively, and we will discover the truth of this observation.
To prevent such a disturbance, the Prince must require an oath from all gold and silversmiths and generally from all those who work in gold and silver never to melt any coins, no matter what hallmark they bear, and attach corporal punishment to the crime, with the loss of the title of master.[^1] Foreign coins must be taken to the Prince’s Mint to be marked again or converted into coin of the realm. Similar precautions must be taken against the transport of coins to foreign countries, and the merchandise that is taken there must be paid for with other goods that are supplied abroad, (356) especially when the money is not local.[^2] In a well-ordered[^3] state there must be people or public companies authorized by the prince to do general commerce with all the neighboring states to prevent individuals from getting involved at their unregulated whim, by taking money out of the country and only bringing back very useless things, as I will show later when I deal with the ways in which one can keep coins in a state and procure a continual movement of them among the contributors[^4] to its wealth.
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