are too little disposed to moderation, too slow in their intellectual
progress, embarrassed as it is at every step by the unceasing
manœuvers of innumerable retainers, civil, military, financial, and
commercial; all impelled, by interested motives, to present things
in false colours, and involve the simplest questions in obscurity,
to allow any reasonable hope of accelerating the downfal of a sys-
tem, which for the last three or four hundred years must have won-
derfully abridged the inestimable benefits, that mankind at large,
in all the five great divisions of the globe, ^p0160.* have, or ought to
have derived from the rapid progress of discovery, and the pro-
digious impulse given to human industry since the commence-
ment of the sixteenth century. The silent advances of intelli-
gence, and the irresistible tide of human affairs will alone effect its
subversion.

WHEN a traveller arrives in France, and there spends 10,000
fr., it must not be supposed that the whole sum is clear profit to
France. The traveller expends it in exchange for the values he
consumes: the effect is just the same, as if he had remained
abroad, and sent to France for what he wanted, instead of com-
ing and consuming it here; and is precisely similar to that of in-
ternational commerce, in which the profit made is not the whole
or principal value received, but a larger or smaller percentage
upon that principal, according to the circumstances.

The matter has not hitherto been viewed in this light. In the
firm conviction of this maxim, that metal-money was the only
item of real wealth, people imagined, that, if a foreigner came
amongst them with 10,000 fr. in his pocket, it was so much
clear profit to the nation: as if the tailor that clothes him, the
jeweller that furnishes him with trinkets, the victualler that feeds
him, gave him no values in exchange for his specie, but made a
profit equal to the total of their respective charges. All that the
nation gains is, the profit upon its dealings with him, and upon
what he purchases: and this is by no means contemptible, for

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