If the time should ever come that capital should be so abundant in all nations, as that obtaining credit will not be an object, then it will be seen that no nation will have so very great a share of manufactures and commerce more than others, as has hitherto been the case.

In countries where the common practice is to sell, chiefly, for [end of page #181] ready money, great fortunes are seldom gained.  Even in wealthy countries, in branches of business where no credit is given, great fortunes are very seldom got, and for a very simple reason.  The business is pretty equally divided.  But in a country that gives long credits, or in a branch of trade on which long credits are given, we always see some individuals gaining immense fortunes, by means of doing a great deal more business than others, who, having less capital, are enabled to do less.

There is not any one thing in which a nation resembles an individual so much, as in mercantile transactions; the rule of one is the rule of all, and the rich individual acts like a rich nation, and the poor one like a poor nation.  The consequences are the same in both cases.  The rich carry on an extensive trade, by means of great capital; the poor, a limited one, dependant =sic= chiefly on industry; but wherever the poor persevere in good conduct, they finish by getting the command of the capital of the rich, and then becoming their rivals.

There is one thing peculiar to the intercourse of rich and poor nations, in which it differs from the intercourse between rich and poor individuals in the same country.  Money, which is the common measure of value, has a different price in different countries, and, indeed, in different parts of the same country.  If a man, from a poor country, carries a bushel of corn with him into a rich, he can live as long upon it as if he had remained where he was; but if he carry the money, that would have bought a bushel of corn at home, he perhaps may not be able to live upon it half so long. {150}

The effect that this produces, in the intercourse between two countries, is, that in proportion as the difference becomes greater, the rich country feels it can command more of the industry of the poor, and the poor feels it can command less of the industry of the rich; so that

—–­ {150} In common life, this difference, between carrying money and necessaries, is perfectly well understood, but it is experience that is the teacher; and the rough countryman, or woman, when they have the opportunity of judging from fact, understand the motives as well as the most profound and ingenius =sic= writer on political economy. -=-

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when their industry can be both applied, with any degree of equality, to the same object, the poor supplies the rich, and therefore increases its own wealth.

It is thus that great numbers of the people in London are fed with butcher-meat from Scotland, and wear shoes from Yorkshire; but there would be a very limited sale in either of those places for meat from Smithfield, or shoes manufactured in London. {151}