many more commodities besides money, which will therefore prevent so
great an effect from taking place on the value of money in the two
countries, as might otherwise be expected.

Beside the improvements in arts and machinery, there are various other
causes which are constantly operating on the natural course of trade,
and which interfere with the equilibrium, and the relative value of
money. Bounties on exportation or importation, new taxes on
commodities, sometimes by their direct, and at other times by their
indirect operation, disturb the natural trade of barter, and produce a
consequent necessity of importing or exporting money, in order that
prices may be accommodated to the natural course of commerce; and this
effect is produced not only in the country where the disturbing cause
takes place, but, in a greater or less degree, in every country of the
commercial world.

This will in some measure account for the different value of money in
different countries; it will explain to us why the prices of home
commodities, and those of great bulk, are, independently of other
causes, higher in those countries where manufactures flourish. Of two
countries having precisely the same population, and the same quantity of
land of equal fertility in cultivation, with the same knowledge too of
agriculture, the prices of raw produce will be highest in that where the
greater skill, and the better machinery is used in the manufacture of
exportable commodities. The rate of profits will probably differ but
little; for wages, or the real reward of the labourer, may be the same
in both; but those wages, as well as raw produce, will be rated higher
in money in that country, into which, from the advantages attending
their skill and machinery, an abundance of money is imported in exchange
for their goods.

Of these two countries, if one had the advantage in the manufacture of
goods of one quality, and the other in the manufacture of goods of
another quality, there would be no decided influx of the precious metals
into either; but if the advantage very heavily preponderated in favour
of either, that effect would be inevitable.

In the former part of this work, we have assumed for the purpose of
argument, that money always continued of the same value; we are now
endeavouring to shew that besides the ordinary variations in the value
of money, and those which are common to the whole commercial world,
there are also partial variations to whic