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CHAPTER   Vm.

On the Payment of our foreign Expenditure.

JtIaving attempted in the preceding chapter to expose chapter
the fallacy of the current opinion, that an excess of ^ ^^^
exports is conclusive evidence of the influx of money,
commensurate with its extent, I shall endeavour to ac¬
count for this uniform result in the balance sheet of our
commmerce by an inquiry into the payment of our foreign
expenditure.

Upon the grant of a subsidy to a foreign power, an
alarm has at all times been excited by the supposition that
the remittance of money was necessary for its payment.
This opinion is derived from the same error, which origi¬
nated the various tenets, upon which the theory of the
balance of trade is constructed, the familiar habit of re¬
garding the intrinsic property of money as an object of
value, without adverting to the attribute, which has been
conferred upon it in consequence of this property, of
forming the common standard of mensuration, and con¬
stituting the mean, by which all value is expressed. When
it is asserted, in the customary language of conversation,
that such a measure requires so much money, the money
is conceived to be the specific object in demand, and
instead of being considered as the medium, by which the