896

TIIJ5 NATURE AND CAUSES OE

smuggling, though not so entirely taken away, would be verymuch diminished. In consequence of those two, apparentlyvery simple and easy alterations, the duties of customs andexcise might probably produce a revenue as great in propor-tion to the consumption of the most thinly inhabited province,as they do at present in proportion to that of the most po-pulous.

The Americans, it has been said, indeed, have no gold orsilver money; the interior commerce of the country being-carried on by a paper currency, and the gold and silver whichoccasionally come among them being all sent to Great Bri-tain in return for the commodities which they receive fromus. But without gold and silver, it is added, there is no pos-sibility of paying taxes. We already get all the gold andsilver which they have. How is it possible to draw from themwhat they have not ?

The present scarcity of gold and silver money in America is not the effect of the poverty of that country, or of the ina-bility of the people there to purchase those metals. In a coun-try where the wages of labour is so much higher, and theprice of provisions so much lower than in England, thegreater part of the people must surely have wherewithal topurchase a greater quantity, if it were either necessary orconvenient for them to do so. The scarcity of those metals,therefore, must be the effect of choice, and not of necessity.

It is for transacting either domestic or foreign business, thatgold and silver money is either necessary or convenient.

The domestic business of every country, it has been shewn\in the second book of this Inquiry, may, at least in peaceabletimes, be transacted by means of a paper currency, with nearlythe same degree of conveniency as by gold and silver money.It is convenient for the Americans, who could always employwith profit in the improvement of their lands a greater stockthan they can easily get, to save as much as possible the ex-pense of so costly an instrument of commerce as gold andsilver, and rather to employ that part of their surplus producewhich would be necessary for purchasing those metals, in pur-chasing the instruments of trade, the materials of clothing,several parts of household furniture, and the iron work neces-sary for building and extending their settlements and plan-tations ; in purchasing, not dead stock, but active and pro-ductive stock. The colony governments find it for their in-terest to supply the people with such a quantity of paper-