market, and so bring home five hundred pounds in money yearly; instead of a thousand pounds, at the end of ten years he will have five thousand pounds by him, and be so much richer. He dies, and his son succeeds, a fashionable young gentleman, that cannot dine without champagne and burgundy, nor sleep but in a damask bed; whose wife must spread a long train of brocade, and his children be always in the newest French cut and stuff; he, being come to the estate, keeps on a very busy family; the markets are weekly frequented, and the commodities of his farm carried out, and sold as formerly, but the returns are made. something different; the fashionable way of eating, drinking, furniture, and clothing, for himself and family, requires more sugar and spice, wine and fruit, silk and ribbons, than in his father's time; so that, instead of nine hundred pounds per ann., he now brings home of consumable commodities to the value of eleven hundred pounds yearly. What comes of this? He lives in splendor, it is true; but this unavoidably carries away the money his father got, and he is every year a hundred pounds poorer. To his expenses, beyond his income, add debauchery, idleness, and quarrels amongst his servants, whereby his manufactures are disturbed, and his business neglected, and a general disorder and confusion through his whole family and farm. This will tumble him down the hill the faster, and the stock, which the industry, frugality, and good order of his father had laid up, will be quickly brought to an end, and he fast in prison. A farm and a kingdom in this respect differ no more, than as greater or less. We may trade, and be busy, and grow poor by it, unless we regulate our expenses; if to this we are idle, negligent, dishonest, malicious, and disturb the sober and industrious in their business, let it be upon what pretence it will, we shall ruin the faster.

4

So that, whatever this author, or any one else may say, money is brought into England by nothing but spending here less of foreign commodities than what we carry to market can pay for; nor can debts, we owe

to foreigners, be paid by bills of exchange, till our commodities exported, and sold beyond sea, have produced money, or debts, due there to some of our merchants; for nothing will pay debts but money, or money's worth, which three or four lines writ in paper cannot be. If such bills have an intrinsic value, and can serve instead of money, why do we not send them to market, instead of our cloth, lead, and tin, and at an easier rate purchase the commodities we want? All that a bill of exchange can do is to direct to whom money due, or taken up upon credit, in a foreign country, shall be paid; and if we trace it, we shall find, that what is owing already, became so for commodities, or money carried from hence: and, if it be taken upon credit, it must (let the debt be shifted from one creditor to another as often as you will) at last be paid by money, or goods, carried from hence, or else the merchant here must turn bankrupt.

We have seen how riches and money are got, kept, or lost, in any country; and that is, by consuming less of foreign commodities than what by commodities, or labour, is paid for. This is in the ordinary course of things: but where great armies and alliances are to be maintained abroad, by supplies sent out of any country, there often, by a shorter and more sensible way, the treasure is diminished. But this, since the holy war, or at least since the improvement of navigation and trade, seldom happening to England, whose princes have found the enlarging their power by sea, and the securing our navigation and trade, more the interest of this kingdom than wars, or conquests, on the continent: expenses in arms beyond sea have had little influence on our riches or poverty. The next thing to be considered is, how money is necessary to trade.

The necessity of a certain proportion of money to trade (I conceive) lies in this, that money, in its circulation, driving the several wheels of trade, whilst it keeps in that channel (for some of it will unavoidably be drained into standing pools) is all shared between the landholder, whose land affords the materials; the labourer, who works them; the broker, i. e. the mer

chant and shopkeeper, who distributes them to those that want them; and the consumer who spends them. Now money is necessary to all these sorts of men, as serving both for counters and for pledges, and so carrying with it even reckoning, and security, that he that receives it shall have the same value for it again, of other things that he wants, whenever he pleases. The one of these it does by its stamp and denomination ; the other by its intrinsic value, which is its quantity.

For mankind, having consented to put an imaginary value upon gold and silver, by reason of their durableness, scarcity, and not being very liable to be counterfeited, have made them, by general consent, the common pledges, whereby men are assured, in exchange for them, to receive equally valuable things, to those they parted with, for any quantity of these metals; by which means it comes to pass, that the intrinsic value, regarded in these metals, made the common barter, is nothing but the quantity which men give or receive of them; for they having, as money, no other value, but as pledges to procure what one wants or desires, and they procuring what we want or desire only by their quantity, it is evident that the intrinsic value of silver and gold, used in commerce, is nothing but their quantity.

The necessity, therefore, of a proportion of money to trade, depends on money, not as counters, for the reckoning may be kept or transferred by writing, but on money as a pledge, which writing cannot supply the place of: since the bill, bond, or other note of debt, I receive from one man, will not be accepted as security by another, he not knowing that the bill or bond is true or legal, or that the man bound to me is honest or responsible, and so is not valuable enough to become a current pledge, nor can by public authority be well made so, as in the case of assigning of bills; because a law cannot give to bills that intrinsic value which the universal consent of mankind has annexed to silver and gold; and hence foreigners can never be brought to take your bills or writings for any part of payment, though perhaps they might pass as valuable considera

tions among your own people, did not this very much hinder it, viz, that they are liable to unavoidable doubt, dispute, and counterfeiting, and require other proofs to assure us that they are true and good security than our eyes, or a touchstone. And, at best, this course, if practicable, will not hinder us from being poor; but may be suspected to help to make us so, by keeping us from feeling our poverty, which, in distress, will be sure to find us with greater disadvantage. Though it be certain it is better than letting any part of our trade fall for want of current pledges; and better too than borrowing money of our neighbours upon use, if this way of assigning bills can be made so easy, safe, and universal at home, as to hinder it.

To return to the business in hand, and show the necessity of a proportion of money to trade. Every man must have at least so much money, or so timely recruits, as may in hand, or in a short distance of time, satisfy his creditor who supplies him with the necessaries of life, or of his trade. For nobody has any longer these necessary supplies than he has money, or credit, which is nothing else but an assurance of money, in some short time. So that it is requisite to trade, that there should be so much money as to keep up the landholder's, labourer's, and broker's, credit: and therefore ready money must be constantly exchanged for wares and labour, or follow within a short time after.

This shows the necessity of some proportion of money to trade: but what proportion that is, is hard to determine; because it depends not barely on the quantity of money, but the quickness of its circulation. The very same shilling may, at one time, pay twenty men in twenty days at another, rest in the same hands one hundred days together. This makes it impossible exactly to estimate the quantity of money needful in trade; but, to make some probable guess, we are to consider how much money it is necessary to suppose must rest constantly in each man's hands, as requisite to the carrying on of trade.

First, therefore, the labourers, living generally but

from hand to mouth; and, indeed, considered as labourers in order to trade, may well enough carry on their part, if they have but money enough to buy victuals, clothes, and tools: all which may very well be provided, without any great sum of money lying still in their hands. The labourers, therefore, being usually paid once a week, (if the times of payment be seldomer there must be more money for the carrying on this part of trade) we may suppose there is constantly amongst them, one with another, or those who are to pay them, always one week's wages in ready money; for it cannot be thought that all or most of the labourers pay away all their wages constantly, as soon as they receive it, and live upon trust till next pay-day. This the farmer and tradesman could not well bear, were it every labourer's case, and every one to be trusted: and, therefore, they must of necessity keep some money in their hands, to go to market for victuals, and to other tradesmen as poor as themselves, for tools; and lay up money too to buy clothes, or pay for those they bought upon credit; which money, thus necessarily resting in their hands, we cannot imagine to be, one with another, much less than a week's wages, that must be in their pockets, or ready in the farmer's hands; for he, who employs a labourer at a shilling per day, and pays him on Saturday nights, cannot be supposed constantly to receive that six shillings just the same Saturday: it must ordinarily be in his hands one time with another, if not a whole week, yet several days before.

This was the ordinary course, whilst we had money running in the several channels of commerce: but that now very much failing, and the farmer, not having money to pay the labourer, supplies him with corn, which, in this great plenty, the labourer will have at his own rate, or else not take it off his hands for wages. And as for the workmen, who are employed in our manufactures, especially the woollen one, these the clothier, not having ready money to pay, furnishes with the necessaries of life, and so trucks commodities for work;