by the sale of his produce to him, without the intervention
of a single dollar of cash. This, then, is merely
barter, and in this way of barter a great portion
of the annual produce of the United States is exchanged
without the intermediation of cash. We might safely,
then, state our medium at the minimum of one thirtieth.
But what is one thirtieth of the value of the annual
produce of the industry of the United States?
Or what is the whole value of the annual produce of
the United States? An able writer and competent
judge of the subject, in 1799, on as good grounds
as probably could be taken, estimated it, on the then
population of four and a half millions of inhabitants,
to be thirty-seven and a half millions sterling, or
one hundred and sixty-eight and three fourths millions
of dollars. See Cooper’s Political Arithmetic,
page 47. According to the same estimate, for our
present population it will be three hundred millions
of dollars, one thirtieth of which, Smith’s
minimum, would be ten millions, and one fifth, his
maximum, would be sixty millions for the quantum of
circulation. But suppose, that, instead of our
needing the least circulating medium of any nation,
from the circumstance before mentioned, we should
place ourselves in the middle term of the calculation,
to wit, at thirty-five millions. One fifth of
this, at the least, Smith thinks should be retained
in specie, which would leave twenty-eight millions
of specie to be exported in exchange for other commodities;
and if fifteen millions of that should be returned
in productive goods, and not in articles of prodigality,
that would be the amount of capital which this operation
would add to the existing mass. But to what mass?
Not that of the three hundred millions, which is only
its gross annual produce; but to that capital of which
the three hundred millions are but the annual produce.
But this being gross, we may infer from it the value
of the capital by considering that the rent of lands
is generally fixed at one third of the gross produce,
and is deemed its nett profit, and twenty times that
its fee simple value. The profits on landed capital
may, with accuracy enough for our purpose, be supposed
on a par with those of other capital. This would
give us then for the United States, a capital of two
thousand millions, all in active employment, and exclusive
of unimproved lands lying in a great degree dormant.
Of this, fifteen millions would be the hundred and
thirty-third part. And it is for this petty addition
to the capital of the nation, this minimum of one
dollar, added to one hundred and thirty-three and a
third, or three fourths per cent., that we are to give
up our gold and silver medium, its intrinsic solidity,
its universal value, and its saving powers in time
of war, and to substitute for it paper, with all its
train of evils, moral, political, and physical, which
I will not pretend to enumerate.