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CHAPTER   Vn.

On  the Balance of Trade.

CHAPTER xdefore I undertake to investigate the theory of the
balance of trade, it is necessary to recapitulate the heads
of the preceding arguments.

After the preliminary observations on the writings of
Mr. Hume, Sir James Steuart, and Dr. Adam Smith, I
endeavoured in the second chapter to explain that it was
not only the property of money to be the universal mea¬
sure of value, but that it was a necessary consequence of
this property that it should be an uniform measure ; and
I attempted to prove,

That the aggregate stock of the specie of a country
constituted the currency by which its produce was mea¬
sured, and not the capital, by which its produce was
raised.

That an increase of currency was an increase of the
means of mensuration, and not an increase of wealth.

And, that no one nation could permanently possess a
greater relative currency than another, and permanently
cause the same sum to measure in one place a less value
than it measured in another.