12 . THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
grocer to add to his sales by increasing his weights and measures. 
As trade expands the currency expands, and conversely. 
The lecturer then referred to a great many fallacies regarding 
the economic laws governing trade and commerce, owing to the pop- 
ular errors regarding the functions of money. For example it was 
popularly supposed that the most profitable commerce was that 
which produced a large surplus of exports over imports. Mulhall 
points out how imports must necessarily exceed exports in value, 
because the former cover the costs of freight and insurance upon the 
latter, which until very recently amounted to about 6 per cent. 
The popular delusion is that when exports exceed imports the differ- 
ence is brought back in money, as if there were some special ad- 
vantage in that brand of labor product which consisted of metallic 
pieces of a given weight, shape and diameter. If money was a mere 
machine to facilitate barter, like weights and measures, the tape line 
or the yard stick, as undoubtedly it was, and nothing else (except 
perhaps to be stored away, like precious stones as unproductive but 
undiminishing capital), how could it be a desirable thing to import 
in exchange for labor products exported? As a matter of fact, it 
never is. 
The commerce of the world does not involve the export or im- 
port of money to the extent of 2 percent of its value. If, said Mr. 
Crerar, he had shown that all trade consisted of barter, how in the 
nature of things could the exports exceed the imports? Eliminate 
money from the computations, and deal with the exports and im- 
ports as products other than money, (as the fact is, when the full 
exchange is completed), and how would the excess of exports over 
imports be shown? If it be true that an excess (in money value) of 
imports over exports represents a debt due by the over-importing 
country to the exporting country, then statistics present this curious 
anomaly. ‘Taking Mulhall’s commerce statistics for 30 years up to 
1890, the speaker divided the commercial world into two groups : 
Those nations that exported more than they imported during the 
period, and those that imported more than they exported. The sum 
total represented the gross commerce of the commercial world. He 
then showed that the grand total of the excess of imports over the 
exports by the debtor, the over-importing nations, which owed the 
