THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.
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chant, nor they his customers; and they are all of them thusmutually less serviceable to one another. In order to avoidthe inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man inevery period of society, after the first establishment of thedivision of labour, must naturally have endeavoured to ma-nage his affairs in such a manner, as to have at all times byhim, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a cer-tain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as heimagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchangefor the produce of their industry.
Many different commodities, it is probable, were succes-sively both thought of and employed for this purpose. Inthe rude ages of society, cattle are said to have been the com-mon instrument of commerce; and, though they must havebeen a most inconvenient one, yet in old times we find thingswere frequently valued according to the number of cattlewhich had been given in exchange for them. The armourof Diomede, says Homer, cost only nine oxen; but that ofGlaucus cost an hundred oxen. Salt is said to be the com-mon instrument of commerce and exchanges in Abyssinia; aspecies of shells in some parts of the coast of India ; driedcod at Newfoundland ; tobacco in Virginia; sugar in someof our West India colonies; hides or dressed leather in someother countries : and there is at this day a village in Scot land where it is not uncommon, I am told, for a workmanto carry nails instead of money to the baker’s shop or thealehouse.
In all countries, however, men seem at last to have beendetermined by irresistible reasons to give the preference, forthis employment, to metals above every other commodity.Metals can not only be kept with as little loss as any othercommodity, scarce any thing being less perishable than theyare, but they can likewise, without any loss, be divided intoany number of parts, as by fusion those parts can easily bereunited again; a quality which no other equally durablecommodities possess, and which more than any other qualityrenders them fit to be the instruments of commerce and cir-culation. The man who wanted to buy salt, for example,and had nothing but cattle to give in exchange for it, musthave been obliged to buy salt to the value of a whole ox, ora whole sheep at a time. lie could seldom buy less thanthis, because what he was to give for it could seldom be di-vided without loss; and if he had a mind to buy more, he