are
weakened by sudden wealth. Industry declined in proportion as Spain
became enriched by the precious metals. But this inquiry is foreign to
my object.

A still more interesting inquiry arises, how far the nations of Europe
were really enriched by the rapid accumulation of gold and silver. The
search for the precious metals may have stimulated commercial
enterprise, but it is not so clear that it added to the substantial
wealth of Europe, except so far as it promoted industry. Gold is not
wealth; it is simply the exponent of wealth. Real wealth is in farms and
shops and ships,--in the various channels of industry, in the results of
human labor. So far as the precious metals enter into useful
manufactures, or into articles of beauty and taste, they are indeed
inherently valuable. Mirrors, plate, jewelry, watches, gilded furniture,
the adornments of the person, in an important sense, constitute wealth,
since all nations value them, and will pay for them as they do for corn
or oil. So far as they are connected with art, they are valuable in the
same sense as statues and pictures, on which labor has been expended.
There is something useful, and even necessary, besides food and raiment
and houses. The gold which ornamented Solomon's temple, or the Minerva
of Phidias, or the garments of Leo X., had a value. The ring which is a
present to brides is a part of a marriage ceremony. The golden watch,
which never tarnishes, is more valuable inherently than a pewter one,
because it remains beautiful. Thus when gold enters into ornaments
deemed indispensable, or into manufactures which are needed, it has an
inherent value,--it is wealth.

But when gold is a mere medium of exchange,--its chief use,--then it has
only a conventional value; I mean, it does not make a nation rich or
poor, since the rarer it is the more it will purchase of the necessaries
of life. A pound's weight of gold, in ancient Greece, or in Mediaeval
Europe, would purchase as much wheat as twenty pounds' weight will
purchase to-day. If the mines of Mexico or Peru or California had never
been worked, the gold in the civilized world three hundred years ago
would have been as valuable for banking purposes, or as an exchange for
agricultural products, as twenty times its present quantity, since it
would have bought as much as twenty times the quantity will buy to-day.
Make diamonds as plenty as crystals, they would be worth no more than
crystals, if they were not ha