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ADVOOA.T21 ticular Interest, therefore all those who, wanting courage to venture in trade, now practice lending money on security for exorbitant interest which, in a scarcity of money will be done, notwithstanding the law, I aay alt such will . probably be against a large addition to our present stock of money; because a plentiful cur rency will lower interest, and make it common to lend on less security. Second All those who are possessors of large sums of money, and are disposed to purchase land, which is attended with a great and sure advantage In a growing country aa this is. I say the Interest of all such men will incline them to oppose a large addition to our money, because their wealth is now continually increas ing by the large interest they receive, which will enable them (if they can keep land from rising) to purchase more eome time hence than they can at pres ent; and, in the meantime, all trade being discouraged; not only those who borrow of them, but the common people in gen eral, will be impoverished and conse quently obliged to sell more land for less money than they will do at present. And yet, after such men are possessed of aa much land as they can purchase, It will then be their interest to have money made plentiful, because that will imme diately make land rise in value in their hands. Now, it ought not to be won dered at if people, from a knowledge of a man's interest, do sometimes make a true gUessathis designs; for interest, they say, will not lie! Third Lawyers and others concerned in court business will probably, many of them, be against a plentiful currency; because people In that case will have less occasion to run in debt, and consequently less occasion to go to law and sue one an other for their debts. Though I know some even among these gentlemen, that regard the public good before their own apparent interest Fourth All those who are anyways dependent on such persons as are above mentioned, whether as holding offices, as tenants, or as debtors, must at least appear to be against a large addition be cause, If they do not, they must sensibly feel their present interest hurt And besides these, there are, doubtless, many well-meaning gentlemen and others who, without any immediate private Interest of their own In view, are against making such an addition, through an opinion they may have of the honesty and sound judgment of some of their friends that oppose it (perhaps for the ends afore said), without having given it any thor ough consideration themselves. And thus It is no wonder if there is a power ful party on that side. Oh the other hand, those who are lov ers of trade, and delight to see manufac tures encouraged, will be for having a large addition to our currency. For they very well know that people will have little heart to advance money in trade, when what they can get is scarce sufficient to purchase necessaries, and supply their families with provisions. Much less will they lay It out in advanc ing new manufactures; nor is It possible new manufactures should turn to any ac count where there is not money to pay the workmen, who are discouraged by being paid in goods, because It is a great disadvantage to them. Again, those who are truly for the pro prietor's interest (and have no separate views of their own that are predominant) will be heartily for a large addition. Be cause, as I have shown above, plenty of money will for several reasons'make land rise In value exceedingly. And I appeal to thoaa immediately concerned for the proprietor In the Bala of Ms linda, whether land has not risen since the first emissions of what paper currency we now have, and even by ita means. Now, we all know the proprietary has great quantities to sell. And since a plentiful currency will be so great a cause of advancing this province in trade and riches, and increas ing the number of ita people, which, though it will not sensibly lessen the in habitants of Great Britain, will occasion a much greater vent and demand for commodities here; and allowing that the crown is more powerful for its subjects increasing in wealth and number, I can not think it the Interest of England to oppose us in making as great a sum of paper money here as we, who are the best judges of our own necessities, find convenient And If I were not sensible that the gentlemen of trade in England, to whom we have already parted with our silver and gold, are misinformed of our circumstances, and therefore en deavor to have our currency stinted to what It now is, I should think the gov ernment at home had some reasons for discouraging and impoverishing this province which we are not acquainted with. It remains now to inquire whether a large addition to our paper currency will make it sink in value very much. And here it will be requisite that we first form just notions of the nature and value of money in general. As providence has so ordered it, that not only different countries, but even dif ferent parts of the same country, have their peculiar most suitable productions; and likewise that men have geniuses adapted to a variety of different arts and manufactures; therefore commerce, or the exchange of one commodity or man ufacture for another, is highly conven ient and beneficial to mankind. As for instance: A. may be skillful In the art of making cloth, and B. understand the raising of corn. A. wants corn andB. wants cloth; upon which they make an exchange with each other for as much as each has occasion for, to the mutual ad vantage and satisfaction of both. But It would be very tedious if there were no other way of general deal ing but by an Immediate change of com modities; because a man that had corn to dispose of and wanted cloth for it might perhaps, in his search lor a chapman to deal with, meet with twenty people who had cloth to dispose of, but wanted no corn; and .with twenty others that wanted his corn but had no cloth to suit him with. To remedy such Inconveniences and facilitate exchange, men have in vented money, properly called a medium of exchange, because through or by its means labor is exchanged for labor, or one commodity for another. And what ever particular thing men have agreed to make this medium of, whether gold, sil ver, copper or tobacco, it is, to those who possess it (if they want anything), that very thing which they want, because it will immediately procure it for them. It is cloth to him that wants cloth, and corn to those that want corn, and so of all other necessaries; It is whatsoever It will procure. Thus he who had corn to dis pose of, and wanted to purchase cloth with it might sell his corn for ita value in this general medium, to one that wanted corn but had no cloth; and with this medium he might purchase cloth of him that wanted no corn, but perhaps some other thing, as iron, it maybe, which this medium will immediately procure, and so he may be said to have exchanged his cloth for iron; and thus the general change is soon performed, to the satisfaction of all parties, with abundance of facility. For many ages those parts of the world which are engaged in commerce have fixed upon gold and silver as the most proper materials for this medium; they being in themselves valuable metals for their fineness, beauty and scarcity. By these, particularly by silver, it has been usual to value all things else. But as silver itself is of no certain permanent value, being worth more or less ac cording to its scarcity or plenty, there fore It seems requisite to fix upon some thing else, more proper to be made a measure of values, and this I take to be labor. By labor may the value of silver be measured as well as other things. As, snppose one man is employed to raise corn, while another is digging and refin ing silver; at the year's end, or at any other period of time, the complete pro duce of corn, and that of silver, are the natural price of each other; and if one be twenty bushels and the other twenty ounces, then an ounce of that silver is worth the labor of raising a bushel of that corn. Now, if by the discovery of some nearer, more easy or more plenti ful mines, a man may get forty ounces of silver as easily as formerly he did twenty, and the same labor is still re quited to raise twenty bushels of corn, then two ounces of silver will be worth no more than the labor of raising one bushel of corn, and that bushel of corn will be as cheap at two ounces as it was before at one, cateris paribus. Thus the riches of a country are to be valued by the quantity of labor its in habitants are able to purchase, and not by the quantity of silver or gold they possess; which will purchase more or lqss labor, and therefore is more or less valuable, as is . said before, according to Its scarcity or plenty. And those metals have grown much more plentiful in Europe since the.dlscovery of America, so they have sunk in value exceedingly ; for, to instance In England, formerly one penny of silver was worth a day's labor, but now it Is hardly worth the sixth part of a day's labor; because not less than sixpence will purchase the labor of a man for a day in any part of that king dom; which is wholly to be attributed to the much greater plenty of money now in England than formerly. And yet per haps England is in effect no richer now than at that time; because as much labor might be purchased or work got done of almost any kind, for 100 then, as will now require, or is now worth G00. In the next place, let us consider the nature of banks emitting bills of credit as they are at this time used in Ham burgh, Amsterdam, London and Venice. Those places being seats of vast trade, and the payment of great sums being for that reason frequent bills of credit are found very' convenient in business; be cause a great sum is more easily counted in them, lighter in carriage, concealed in less room,and therefore safer in travel ing or laying up, and on many accounts they are very much valued. The banks are the general cashiers of all gentlemen, merchants "and great traders in and about those cities; there they deposit their money, and may take out bills to this value, for which they can be certain to have money again at the bank at any time. This gives the bills a credit; so that In England they are never less valu able than money, and in Venice and Amsterdam they are generally worth more. And the bankers, always reserv ing money in hand to answer more than the common run of demands (and some people constantly putting in while others are taking out) are able besides to lend large sums on good security, to the gov ernment or others, for a reasonable In terest by which they are paid for their care and trouble; and the money which otherwise would have lain dead in their hands, is made to circulate again there by among the people. And thus the run ning cash of the nation, is, as it were, doubled; for all great payments being made In bills, money is lower, trade be comes more plentiful. And thisjs an ex ceeding great advantage to a trading country that is not overstocked with gold and silver. Asthosewho take bills out of the banks in Europe, put in money for" se curity; so here, and In some of the neigh boring provinces, we engage our land. Which of these methods will most ef fectually secure the bills from actually sinking in value, comes next to be con sidered. Trade in general being nothing else but the exchange of labor for labor, the value of all things is, as I have said be fore, most justly measured by labor. Now suppose I put my money Into a bank, and take out a bill for the value; If this bill at the time of my receiving it would purchase me the labor of 100 men for twenty days, but some time after it will only purchase the labor of the same men for fifteen days, it is plain the bill has sunk in value one fourth part 'Now silver and gold being of no permanent value, and as this bill is founded on money, and therefore to be esteemed as such, it may be that the occasion of this fall is the increasing plenty of gold and silver, by which money is one-fourth part less valuable than before, and there fore one-fourth more is given of it for the same quantity of labor; and, if land Is not become more plentiful by some proportionate decrease of the people, one-fourth part more of money is given for the same quantity of land; whereby it appears that it would have been more profitable to me to have laid that money out in land which I put into the bank, than to place it there and take a bill for it And it is certain that the value of money has been continually sinking in England for several ages past because It has been continually increasing in quan tity. But if bills could be taken out of a bank In Europe on a land security, it is probable the value of such bills would be more certain and steady, because the number of inhabitants continues to be near the same In those countries from age to age. For, as bills issued upon money securi ty are money, so bills issued upon land are In effect coined land. Therefore (to apply the above to our own circumstances) if land In this province was falling, or any way likely to fall, it would behoove the Legislature most carefully to contrive how to pre vent the bills Issued upon land from falling with it But as our people Increase exceedingly, and will be further increased, as I have before shown, by the help of a large addition to our cur rency, and as land in consequence is con tinually rising, so, In case no bills are emitted but what are upon land security, the money acts in every part punctually enforced and executed, the payments of principal and interest being duly and strictly required, and the principal bona fide sunk according to law, it is absolutely impossible such bills should ever sink below their first value, or below the value of the land on which they are founded. In short there is so little dan ger of their sinking that they would cer tainly riae as the land rises, if they were not emited in a proper manner for pre venting it That is, by providing in the act that payment may be made either in those bills or in any other bills made made current by any act of the Legiahr