[6] Dr. WHEWELL, ON THE MATHEMATICAL EXPOSITION OF 



100 .... . 100 



Hence rnG = x 10,000, which is less than K in the ratio . 



106 106 



105 

 But prices are only lessened in the ratio — - : hence the former producers of (JST) who are 



driven to produce {F), lose. 



82. The formula F = mG, can perhaps hardly be trusted for actual results when the differ- 

 ences are small. It may however still serve to shew the possible results of our suppositions. 



83. It appears, by the previous reasoning, that the equality of the imports and exports 

 of a country is not true, even as a permanent or average state, except we include among the 

 imports, gold and silver ; and that there may be and must be a constant annual current of gold 

 and silver into every country which does not itself produce those metals in sufficient abundance 

 to supply its own wants. It appears also that the metallic current which thus flows constantly 

 into any country, may change its amount from year to year, in consequence of the alteration of 

 the amount of other imports and exports ; and further, that with such a change of the amount 

 of the metallic current into any country, there arises, when the change has a permanent character, 

 a general change of prices in the country. When the imports into a country become perma- 

 nently greater, all prices in that country undergo a permanent fall. Those countries have 

 the highest prices, which produce the greatest abundance of exportable articles, compared with 

 the amount of the imports. The excess of other commodity exports over imports, produces a 

 constant mercantile pressure, which keeps the metallic currency at a higher level in that 

 country than in surrounding countries. The different levels of the general scale of prices in 

 different neighbouring countries depend upon the continual metallic currents, which, in virtue 

 of their mutual trade, set in each to or from the others. The different levels at which the 

 precious metals stand in different countries are no more at variance with the general tendency 

 of those commodities to find their level, than the fact, that a series of ponds, connected by 

 pumps constantly working, may be at different levels, is at variance with the tendency of water 

 to find its level ; the pumping of international trade determines a metallic current between 

 each two countries, which current affects the metallic level in both countries, and in turn, has 

 its velocity determined by the difference of level. 



84. It has generally been supposed that, for many years, prices in general have been 

 higher in England than in most other countries ; and various ways of accounting for this 

 fact have been proposed by various writers. Mr. Senior, in his Lectures on the Cost of the 

 Precious Metals, ascribes the difference to the superior efficiency of English as compared 

 with foreign labour. But Mr. J. S. Mill (Polit. Econ. n. p. 142) rightly, as I conceive, 

 dissents from this view, and gives an account of the conditions on which the general scale of 

 prices depends, agreeing, in the main, with the account given here. 



85. I have not thought it necessary to consider the subject of the exchanges between 

 different countries, although the state of the exchanges may often affect the amount of 

 exportation. For this effect of the exchanges is not an independent and distinct effect, but 



