It is not always necessary to accumulate gold and silver in order to enable a country to carry on foreign wars, and to maintain fleets and armies in distant countries.Fleets and armies are maintained, not with gold and silver, but with consumable goods.The nation which, from the annual produce of its domestic industry, from the annual revenue arising out of its lands, labour, and consumable stock, has wherewithal to purchase those consumable goods in distant countries, can maintain foreign wars there.
A nation may purchase the pay and provisions of an army in a distant country three different ways: by sending abroad either, first, some part of its accumulated gold and silver, or, secondly, some part of the annual produce of its manufactures;or, last of all, some part of its annual rude produce.
The gold and silver which can properly be considered as accumulated or stored up in any country may be distinguished into three parts: first, the circulating money; secondly, the plate of private families; and, last of all, the money which may have been collected by many years' parsimony, and laid up in the treasury of the prince.
It can seldom happen that much can be spared from the circulating money of the country; because in that there can seldom be much redundancy.The value of goods annually bought and sold in any country requires a certain quantity of money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consumers, and can give employment to no more.The channel of circulation necessarily draws to itself a sum sufficient to fill it, and never admits any more.Something, however, is generally withdrawn from this channel in the case of foreign war.By the great number of people who are maintained abroad, fewer are maintained at home.Fewer goods are circulated there, and less money becomes necessary to circulate them.An extraordinary quantity of paper money, of some sort or other, such as exchequer notes, navy bills, and bank bills in England, is generally issued upon such occasions, and by supplying the place of circulating gold and silver, gives an opportunity of sending a greater quantity of it abroad.All this, however, could afford but a poor resource for maintaining a foreign war of great expense and several years duration.
The melting down the plate of private families has upon every occasion been found a still more insignificant one.The French, in the beginning of the last war, did not derive so much advantage from this expedient as to compensate the loss of the fashion.
The accumulated treasures of the prince have, in former times, afforded a much greater and more lasting resource.In the present times, if you except the king of Prussia, to accumulate treasure seems to be no part of the policy of European princes.
The funds which maintained the foreign wars of the present century, the most expensive perhaps which history records, seem to have had little dependency upon the exportation either of the circulating money, or of the plate of private families, or of the treasure of the prince.The last French war cost Great Britain upwards of ninety millions, including not only the seventy-five millions of new debt that was contracted, but the additional two shillings in the pound land-tax, and what was annually borrowed of the sinking fund.More than two-thirds of this expense were laid out in distant countries; in Germany, Portugal, America, in the ports of the Mediterranean, in the East and West Indies.The kings of England had no accumulated treasure.We never heard of any extraordinary quantity of plate being melted down.The circulating gold and silver of the country had not been supposed to exceed eighteen millions.Since the late recoinage of the gold, however, it is believed to have been a good deal under-rated.Let us suppose, therefore, according to the most exaggerated computation which I remember to have either seen or heard of, that, gold and silver together, it amounted to thirty millions.Had the war been carried on by means of our money, the whole of it must, even according to this computation, have been sent out and returned again at least twice in a period of between six and seven years.Should this be supposed, it would afford the most decisive argument to demonstrate how unnecessary it is for government to watch over the preservation of money, since upon this supposition the whole money of the country must have gone from it and returned to it again, two different times in so short a period, without anybody's knowing anything of the matter.The channel of circulation, however, never appeared more empty than usual during any part of this period.Few people wanted money who had wherewithal to pay for it.The profits of foreign trade, indeed, were greater than usual during the whole war; but especially towards the end of it.This occasioned, what it always occasions, a general overtrading in all the parts of Great Britain; and this again occasioned the usual complaint of the scarcity of money, which always follows overtrading.Many people wanted it, who had neither wherewithal to buy it, nor credit to borrow it; and because the debtors found it difficult to borrow, the creditors found it difficult to get payment.Gold and silver, however, were generally to be had for their value, by those who had that value to give for them.