h money is subject in
particular countries; and in fact, that the value of money is never the
same in any two countries, depending as it does on relative taxation,
on manufacturing skill, on the advantages of climate, natural
productions, and many other causes.

Although, however, money is subject to such perpetual variations, and
consequently the prices of the commodities which are common to most
countries, are also subject to considerable difference, yet no effect
will be produced on the rate of profits, either from the influx or
efflux of money. Capital will not be increased, because the circulating
medium is augmented. If the rent paid by the farmer to his landlord, and
the wages to his labourers, be 20 per cent. higher in one country than
another, and if at the same time the nominal value of the farmer's
capital be 20 per cent. more, he will receive precisely the same rate of
profits, although he should sell his raw produce 20 per cent. higher.

Profits, it cannot be too often repeated, depend on wages; not on
nominal, but real wages; not on the number of pounds that may be
annually paid to the labourer, but on the number of days' work necessary
to obtain those pounds. Wages may therefore be precisely the same in
two countries: they may bear too the same proportion to rent, and to the
whole produce obtained from the land, although in one of those countries
the labourer should receive ten shillings per week, and in the other
twelve.

In the early states of society, when manufactures have made little
progress, and the produce of all countries is nearly similar, consisting
of the bulky and most useful commodities, the value of money in
different countries will be chiefly regulated by their distance from the
mines which supply the precious metals; but as the arts and improvements
of society advance, and different nations excel in particular
manufactures, although distance will still enter into the calculation,
the value of the precious metals will be chiefly regulated by the
superiority of those manufactures.

Suppose all nations to produce corn, cattle, and coarse clothing only,
and that it was by the exportation of such commodities that gold could
be obtained from the countries which produced them, or from those who
held them in subjection; gold would naturally be of greater exchangeable
value in Poland than in England, on account of the greater expense of
sending such a bulky commodity as corn the more distant v