THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

897

money as is fully sufficient and generally more than sufficient *for transacting their domestic business. Some of those go-vernments, that of Pennsylvania particularly, derive a revenuefrom lending this paper-money to their subjects, at an inte-rest of so much per cent. Others, like that of MassachusettsBay, advance upon extraordinary emergencies a paper-moneyof this kind for defraying the public expense, and afterward,when it suits the conveniency of the colony, redeem it at theappreciated value to which it gradually falls. In 1747,* thatcolony paid in this manner the greater part of its public debts,with the tenth part of the money for which its bills had beengranted. It suits the conveniency of the planters to save theexpense of employing gold and silver money in their domestictransactions ; and it. suits the conveniency of the colony go-vernments to supply them with a medium, which, though at-tended with some very considerable disadvantages, enablesthem to save that expense. The redundancy of paper-moneynecessarily banishes gold and silver from the domestic trans-actions of the colonies, for the same reason that it has banishedthose metals from the greater part of the domestic transactionsin Scotland , and in both countries it is not the poverty, butthe enterprising and projecting spirit of the people, their de-sire of employing all the stock which they can get as activeand productive stock, which has occasioned this redundancyof paper-money.

In the exterior commerce which the different colonies carryon with Great Britain, gold and silver are more or less em-ployed, exactly in proportion as they are more or less neces-sary. Where those metals are not necessary, they seldomappear. Where they are necessary, they are generally found.

In the commerce between Great Britain and the tobaccocolonies, the British goods are generally advanced to the co-lonists at a pretty long credit, and are. afterward paid for intobacco rated at a certain price It is more convenient for thecolonists to pay in tobacco than in gold and silver. It wouldbe more convenient for any merchant to pay for the goodswhich his correspondents had sold to him in some other sortof goods which he might happen to deal in, than in money.Such a merchant would have no occasion to keep any part ofhis stock by him unemployed, and in ready money, for an-swering occasional demands, lie could have, at all times alarger quantity of goods in his shop or warehouse, and he

* Spc IJutcliiiisun's Hist, of Massadmsclt’s Hay, Vol. II, page 4 : 16 , ct #P q,