156 ADAM SMITH. 



of the Mercantile System its great expedients for ob- 

 taining an increase of the precious metals by making the 

 country export much and import little. Accustomed as 

 we now are to the plain and obvious consideration, that 

 those metals, like all other merchandise, can only be bought 

 with other merchandise, that when this merchandise exists, 

 it will obtain the metals ; that unless it exists none can by 

 any means be procured; that the natural industry of the 

 country can alone give it existence ; that this industry, if 

 cramped by regulations, can never raise it so cheaply or 

 so profitably as when left free ; that all restraints upon 

 importation diminish the value of home produce by 

 raising the price of the foreign, which is its price ; that 

 all bounties are a waste of the capital, and obstruct the 

 very ends they are intended to gain ; finally, that the 

 metals themselves are not wealth, but only one part, and 

 a very small and most insignificant part, of the national 

 capital, which might be augmented to exuberance, and 

 make the nation abundantly and superabundantly wealthy, 

 without any specie at all, if means could be devised of 

 restraining the excessive issue of a paper currency, or any 

 other instrument could be devised for conveniently effect- 

 ing exchanges accustomed as we now are to these obvious 

 views of this subject, we seem to wonder that the elabo- 

 rate exposure of manifest error to which the six chapters 

 of Dr. Smith's work are devoted, each chapter examining 

 one of the resources of the mercantile system, should ever 

 have been required in order to overthrow the fabric. But 

 it is because he wrote those invaluable chapters that these 

 doctrines, which though often before attacked, as we have 

 seen, both abroad and at home, yet continued everywhere 

 to prevail, and especially to prevail among the rulers of 



