is not understood by the
people, and the pressure of it is irregularly distributed, and with an
unperceived gradation.

25. The use of substances of intrinsic value as the materials of a
currency, is a barbarism;--a remnant of the conditions of barter, which
alone render commerce possible among savage nations. It is, however,
still necessary, partly as a mechanical check on arbitrary issues;
partly as a means of exchanges with foreign nations. In proportion to
the extension of civilization, and increase of trustworthiness in
Governments, it will cease. So long as it exists, the phenomena of the
cost and price of the articles used for currency are mingled with those
proper to currency itself, in an almost inextricable manner: and the
market worth of bullion is affected by multitudinous accidental
circumstances, which have been traced, with more or less success, by
writers on commercial operations: but with these variations the true
political economist has no more to do than an engineer, fortifying a
harbour of refuge against Atlantic tide, has to concern himself with the
cries or quarrels of children who dig pools with their fingers for its
streams among the sand.

26. III.--RICHES. According to the various industry, capacity, good
fortune, and desires of men, they obtain greater or smaller share of,
and claim upon, the wealth of the world.

The inequalities between these shares, always in some degree just and
necessary, may be either restrained by law or circumstance within
certain limits; or may increase indefinitely.

Where no moral or legal restraint is put upon the exercise of the will
and intellect of the stronger, shrewder, or more covetous men, these
differences become ultimately enormous. But as soon as they become so
distinct in their extremes as that, on one side, there shall be manifest
redundance of possession, and on the other manifest pressure of
need,--the terms "riches" and "poverty" are used to express the opposite
states; being contrary only as the terms "warmth" and "cold" are
contraries, of which neither implies an actual degree, but only a
relation to other degrees, of temperature.

27. Respecting riches, the economist has to inquire, first, into the
advisable modes of their collection; secondly, into the advisable modes
of their administration.

Respecting the collection of national riches, he has to inquire, first,
whether he is justified in calling the nation rich, if the quantity of
weal