10 the Major Disadvantages Derived from This Alteration of Money (A Treatise on the Alteration of Money) (Excerpt‪)‬

First of all, the current large supply of copper money is against our Spanish laws. There is no limitation on gold and silver money in the 1497 decree of the Catholic kings. An individual was allowed to mint as much of these metals as he had. They decreed, however, in the third law, that no more than ten million maravedis were to be struck, with the responsibility for this minting divided, according to a determined ratio, among seven mints. Then Philip II, king of Spain, decreed in a 1566 law that it was not advantageous to manufacture more copper money than would be enough for common use and commerce. He therefore commanded that such money was not to be minted without royal authorization. Moreover, copper money should be commonly employed only in small purchases, and gold or silver was to be used in greater monetary exchanges. Anything beyond these limits would involve public damage and upheaval, for money was invented to facilitate trade, and that money is more acceptable, which better and more opportunely accomplishes its end, as Aristotle remarks in his Politics (bk. 1, chap. 6). But abundance of copper money brings about the opposite. Counting it is a great burden: A man can hardly count a thousand gold pieces in copper coins in a day. As for transporting coins, it is laborious and expensive to carry them to distant places to buy goods. For these reasons, an inundation of this money is opposed by our laws. Of course, I would not approve of minting just silver money as, for example, in England under the recently deceased Queen Elizabeth and in some German states. I realize that it can be divided in tiny parts. It is said that Renato, the Duke of Anjou, made a thousand coins out of an ounce of silver (I would prefer a pound). With these coins, however, one could not buy tiny and cheap trinkets and give alms to the needy. Much greater harms result if the abuse is in the other direction--if the land is inundated with copper money like rivers flooded with winter storms. So much for the first disadvantage.