Re jumping off the Mendota Bridge. There’s a Mendota Bridge in College Station, Texas? Because I thought this was just a few weeks’ visit, and there’s still an awful lot of Wealth left to wade through before you hit the end. You shouldn’t have to worry much in any case. Smith’s big point in Ch. II.2 is, there’s nothing Special about precious metals as a country’s sole medium of exchange, and much to be gained by downplaying their role. He acknowledges that there have been problems and abuses relating to paper money, then explains away each and every one as a failure not of the medium but of those charged with its proper oversight. All of which feeds into his underlying anti-mercantilist agenda. Dude was all about free trade. In fact, his final sentence of the chapter is as good a summation of Smithian economic philosophy as we’ve seen thus far: “In general, if any branch of trade, or any division of labor, be advantageous to the public, the freer and more general the competition, it will always be the more so.”