there; and that, if the quantity of
victuals were to increase, the number of pots
and pans would readily increase along with it;
a part of the increased quantity of victuals
being employed in purchasing them, or in
maintaining an additional number of workmen
whose business it was to make them. It should
as readily occur, that the quantity of gold and
silver is in every country limited by the use
which there is for those metals; that their use
consists in circulating commodities, as coin,
and in affording a species of household furniture,
as plate; that the quantity of coin in
every country is regulated by the value of the
commodities which are to be circulated by it;
increase that value, and immediately a part of
it will be sent abroad to purchase, wherever it
is to be had, the additional quantity of coin
requisite for circulating them: that the quantity
of plate is regulated by the number and
wealth of those private families who choose to
indulge themselves in that sort of magnificence;
increase the number and wealth of
such families, and a part of this increased
wealth will most probably be employed in
purchasing, wherever it is to be found, an
additional quantity of plate; that to attempt to
increase the wealth of any country, either by
introducing or by detaining in it an unnecessary
quantity of gold and silver, is as absurd
as it would be to attempt to increase the good
cheer of private families, by obliging them to
keep an unnecessary number of kitchen utensils.
As the expense of purchasing those unnecessary
utensils would diminish, instead of
increasing, either the quantity or goodness of
the family provisions; so the expense of purchasing
an unnecessary quantity of gold and
silver must, in every country, as necessarily
diminish the wealth which feeds, clothes, and
lodges, which maintains and employs the people.
Gold and silver, whether in the shape
of coin or of plate, are utensils, it must be remembered,
as much as the furniture of the
kitchen. Increase the use of them, increase
the consumable commodities which are to be
circulated, managed, and prepared by means
of them, and you will infallibly increase the
quantity; but if you attempt by extraordinary
means to increase the quantity, you will as infallibly
diminish the use, and even the quantity
too, which in these metals can never he
greater than what the use requires. Were
they ever to be accumulated beyond this quantity,
their transportation is so easy, and the
loss which attends their lying idle and unemployed
so great, that no law could prevent
their being immediately sent out of the
country.
It is not always necessary to accumulate
gold and silver, in order to enable a country
to carry on foreign wars, and to maintain
fleets and armies in distant countries. Fleets
and armies are maintained, not with gold and
silver, but with consumable goods. The nation
which, from the annual produce of its
domestic industry, from the annual revenue
arising out of its lands, and labour, and consumable
stock, has wherewithal to purchase
those consumable goods in distant countries,
can maintain foreign wars there.
A nation may purchase the pay and provisions
of an army in a distant country three
different ways; by sending abroad either, first,
some part of its accumulated gold and silver;
or, secondly, some part of the annual produce
of its manufactures; or, last of all, some part
of its annual rude produce.
The gold and silver which can properly be
considered as accumulated, or stored up in any
country, may be distinguished into three parts;
first, the circulating money; secondly, the
plate of private families; and, last of all, the
money which may have been collected by many
years parsimony, and laid up in the treasury
of the prince.
It can seldom happen that much can be
spared from the circulating money of the
country; because in that there can seldom be
much redundancy. The value of goods annually
bought and sold in any country requires
a certain quantity of money to circulate
and distribute them to their proper consumers,
and can give employment to no more.
The channel of circulation necessarily draws
to itself a sum sufficient to fill it, and never
admits any more. Something, however, is
generally withdrawn from this channel in the
case of foreign war. By the great number of
people who are maintained abroad, fewer are
maintained at home. Fewer goods are circulated
there, and less money becomes necessary
to circulate them. An extraordinary quantity
of paper money of some sort or other,
too, such as exchequer notes, navy bills, and
bank bills, in England, is generally issued upon
such occasions, and, by supplying the
place of circulating gold and silver, gives an
opportunity of sending a greater quantity of
it abroad. All this, however, could afford
but a poor resource for maintaining a foreign
war, of great expense, and several years duration.
The melting down of the plate of private
families has, upon every occasion, been found
a still more insignificant one. The French,
in the beginning of the last war, did not derive
so much advantage from this expedient
as to compensate the loss of the fashion.
The accumulated treasures of the prince
have in former times afforded a much greater
and more lasting resource. In the present
times, if you except the king of Prussia, to accumulate
treasure seems to be no part of the
policy of European princes.
The funds which maintained the foreign
wars of the present century, the most expensive
perhaps which history records, seem to
have had little dependency upon the exportation
either of the circulating money, or of the